Why Register? And How to Register

Anything relating to the operation of this site.
Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Why Register? And How to Register

Postby Daffy » Mon Jun 27, 2005 10:28 pm

WHY REGISTER?

1. Contributing to this board: The most obvious benefit of registering is that you can contribute to discussions on this board. Without registering you will only be able to read what other people say. There is of course no obligation to contribute just because you are registered.

2. Easy viewing of new posts: When you are logged in, any thread in which new posts have been made since you last visited is highlighted with an orange icon. Click on the orange icon and it will take you straight to the first post made since then. This saves searching for posts you haven't yet read.

3. Private Messaging: Every user can be contacted by Private Message (PM). PMs can only be seen by the sender and recipient and are therefore a useful way of communicating with an individual user out of sight of the public forum. PM is a little like email, but the message is stored on this board instead of arriving in your email inbox. You can be alerted of the arrival of new PMs by email, and/or a popup when you next visit the board.

HOW TO REGISTER

Click on the 'Register' link at the top of this screen and fill out the form. You will need to give a valid email address and wait for your registration to be confirmed. It's as simple as that.

NOTE: some new users have not been receiving emails confirming that their registration has been accepted. This may be because of spam filters at the user's ISP. If you haven't received a confirmation email within three days of registering, try logging in anyway using your username and selected password. If that doesn't work, email mgormez@chello.nl.

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Postby Daffy » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:54 am

UPDATED (26 March 2006):

Your email address

The email address you supply when you register must be one supplied by your ISP or hosting provider. We no longer accept registrations using free email/webmail accounts, and the more common ones such as hotmail, yahoo, lycos etc are now blacklisted.

Why? Because there have been several attempts to disrupt this site by registering multiple accounts using free or 'throwaway' email addresses, sometimes masquerading as other users. By only accepting ISP accounts, we can (a) have a higher level of confidence that the new user is not pretending to be someone else, and (b) report abuse to their ISP.

Our apologies to new users who are inconvenienced by this change, but we could not allow the board to continue to be compromised in this way.

Rest assured that the email address you supply upon registration is not visible to any other user except the administrator and moderators of this site, and will not be disclosed to anyone else.

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Email address

Postby Daffy » Sun Apr 09, 2006 12:58 pm

I mentioned in the post above that we are not allowing registrations using free email services, and why regrettably this change has become necessary.

Notwithstanding this change, many of the applications for new user accounts are still being submitted quoting free email addresses.

We've blacklisted the more common free email services around by configuring this board's software to automatically reject any registration using such an address.

We cannot blacklist all of the dozens of free email services around, but we can and do check the email address supplied with every application to see if it belongs to a free email service. If it does, we do not activate the application.

Please supply only an ISP, work, or other 'primary' email address when filling out the registration screen. Many ISPs offer more than one address per account and you can if you like create one specially for the purposes of this board.

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Links to external web sites in user registration details

Postby Daffy » Sat Jun 17, 2006 10:26 am

New user registrations containing links to irrelevant external web sites will be deleted immediately without notice.

Over the past three months around 95% of new user registrations have been spammers. Their sole purpose in registering is not to participate in this board, but to display a link to another site in their user details and improve their Google page ranking (see http://www.google.com/technology/ for an explanation). They have all been deleted immediately.

Most of these sites sell pornography, illegal drugs or other questionable products and services. Some sites appear to be innocuous but are cleverly disguised to link to undesirable sites or improve their page ranking.

Please therefore note that any new registration containing any link to an external site is likely to be deleted immediately without notice. The only exceptions are where it is obvious that the other site has some connection with the subject matter of this board (eg SES, Scientology), or it is a genuine personal site.


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