New Member Registration

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I check the members log every now & then and we still get new applicants pretty regularly. Today, I approved two new members: jimiayler & esilverm because their application info looks legit. We'll see if I was right or if they start spamming away.

I approved a couple last month too but those two users never posted, so maybe it took me too long to approve them?

I am toying with the idea of approving a few more, just to see if we can get more posters in here but I'm afraid of setting the spammers free to run wild.

[Dan Gould]

This place needs new posters.

Or else it will consist of what are you listening to now, punctuated very occasionally by actually interesting conversation.

Nobody wants spammers but why keep the door shut 99.9% of the way?  Avoid the extra work of banning someone who spams and removing their posts?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

It's tricky. The biggest problem with a lot of the applicants is that most use a gmail.com e-mail address, which makes googling it near impossible. Also, a lot of the IP addresses appear spoofed or are in the far flung reaches of the globe. I actually don't know if the e-mail verification system works at all because some of them look weird.

An to be honest, I've managed to find a few people who were clearly trying to spoof someone else, using e-mail addresses with slight variations from real e-mails.

[mjazzg]

Maybe we should just ask them if they have a copy of the Complete Bill Barron Mosaic. That should sift the wheat from the chaff.

[JSngry]

And if they yes, demand a proof of life photo.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I've started approving some recent members but I've restricted their ability to post without mod approval. This way, we can make sure the person is not just a spammer. Although I do suppose they could still play nice for their first few posts and then spam the heck out of us.

[sonnymax]

27 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I've started approving some recent members but I've restricted their ability to post without mod approval...

So these lucky few only get to contribute if you say so? SUPER-MODERATOR!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

No. JSngry & I can both approve their posts. But if I don't turn this option on, they would be free to spam us if we're away from the board.

My intention was to turn off post approval if the person is legit. I know of no other way to approve these people without risking this place becoming Spamville.

That being said, I am open to suggestions. I doubt "approve them all" will work as there are almost 11,000 accounts awaiting approval dating back to 2016, which is when Jim A turned off auto-approve.

[Dan Gould]

What about deleting the 11,000 and starting with auto-approve, or a presumption of legitimate interest for most accounts, going forward?

[JSngry]

It's real easy to flag a spammer, and once flagged...but 11,000 is a bigassbuttload to do anything with more or less at once.

I also wonder if a legitimate user from 2016 would still give a damn in 2025. If it was me and all of a sudden I got an approval notice 9 years after the fact, I would probably feel more than a little fuquitous about it. Or else I might think that I was being spammed.

So I think that Dan's idea is in fact a good one and a practical one.