register activation
 

i know this really dosent affect members, but every now and again i look to see how many people are online, the most ive seen is about 60 but about 2/3 or more are guests.

im just wondering if its the activation process, i mean yerh ok, email verification but is manual approval really necessary? Perhaps there would be more registered users if that wasnt in place because in my case i had to wait about 2 days. suppose alot people would be detered.

This is only a point i wish to make. Admin might have there own reasons?

MS1029 is one of the reason why it's manual.

not quite following...

He was a shit member who kept returning to take the piss. Thing is, every time, we knew it was him.

you weren't here when he was acting, lets call it 'silly', joshkrz.

also did anyone else notice a new member not long ago actually managed to register and was on the forums with the name 'madebyMS1029toannoyAlcar'. i PM'd Oddey about it.

i really want to know how he got in, unless he changed his name after he joined. he was still pretty new because i couldnt check his profile.

I saw it. I just ignored it. Thing is, he wouldn't have been able to post, and would not have been approved. Basically, he was just proving how brainless he was yet again.

Activation is manual so the admins can run IP checks and stuff to make sure that the registering member is not a multi, bot or Meech.

And most of those guests are almost certainly search engine spiders.

ahh i didnt know they came up ah ok then

thanks for everyones info, definatly prooved me wrong :p

We're just sociopaths.

Bots can be fooled with that image activation thing. But I see your point.

Welcome to 2009, where every bot maker uses spamborgs! Nah, image verification isn't enough. I suggest to automatically ban any IP that has a user registering and filling fields with the words "wow gold", meaningless numbers, or qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm.

I'm likely mistaken, but I think guests are unregistered visitors not unverified members. I think that it listed me as online when I was wandering the forum after I registered but before I was approved by a moderator.

So, if I am correct, getting rid of the registration activation thing wouldn't solve the issue you brought up.

I assume the stream of new users is being controlled carefully by the moderators at the moment? How many do you reject on a daily basis?

Even if it wasn't manual, all new members would still just post one thing, get bored, and leave. New users have very short attention spans when it comes to forums.

As far as I can tell, almost all of the 'spambot' members have been real people typing at real computers. Not auto-bots.

Strangely, the 'Newest Member' thing displays the most recently registered member, not the most recently approved member. That user account was blocked immediately.

FYI, I regularly check the list of users awaiting approval. I use my innate bullshit sensor to see which ones seem trustworthy and everyone else (being approximately 90%) get checked against a known list of forum spammers. For every spammer that invades our forum, 10-20 are blocked at the gates. That's why we need the approval process and that's why we have so little spamvertising.

Including you?


http://backstagebusiness.files.wordp...timusprime.jpg

oh i see. i didnt know you actually did that. thats quite a lot of work i assume with all the applications you must receive.

wow thats pressure, only admins do this or do moderators do this aswell?

Ok, most do. And yea i can remember joining then taking an extremly long absence.

Only admins do this.




Although I only bother checking once every few months. Unless someone decides to contact me through TOL’s contact form.

We have no spamvertising, fact. But we do have something much much worse...

Say, does that autobot have a bulge?

ah sorry about posting there about 5 times, i thought it was a glitch or summert that it was taking so long.

Once in a blue moon you see some before an Admin purges it.

I've only seen one since I've been here.

Props indeed to the admins around here and to the way Alcar runs this place. Very strict, very formal, very professional. We're the most official unofficial Oddworld fansite there currently is so I think Alcar is doing a good job keeping the bullshit level to a minimum.

Members who really want to contribute will wait until they are approved. And with Nate on the team these days I doubt the approval time is very long. I remember when I first registered here I had to wait a whole week before I was approved.

Ha! Thanks for your approval. Truth be told, I've only started checking out the registrations in the last few weeks. Before then, they had to wait for Alcar to bother logging in to the admin page.

I regularly approved members back then, but as of recent my activity on OWF has dropped noticably.

Alcar...

I vaguely recall someone telling off Wil for not validating any new members.

Possibly in London when we logged into the admin CP, Peter saw how many unapproved members there were, and chided me for not checking it?

Despite my not being aware of this being a responsibility or possibility.

Oh yes, that's right. That was so much fun. Definitely a highlight of the day.