Hi All, just catching up on this thread....quick on the uptake as always.
There's no glossing over this one: the forum registration process leaves a lot to be desired. Ten years ago when we started the site we used a basic Captcha challenge to separate real people from bots. We also blacklisted whole geographic regions because that's where almost all of the spam sign ups came from (and still do in fact) and known dodgy ISPs etc. This worked for a bit until we realised two things:
- Most sign ups these days from spammers are done by real people, not robots.
- Our blanket region/ISP policy was too heavy-handed and we were rejecting genuine sign up requests.
So, starting about 5 years ago we took a different tack and now use a semi-automated approach which combines anti-spam software to weed out the really obvious, known offenders (of which there are several hundred a day) and then an additional set of manual checks by the admins for all registrations which don't get flagged by the software. This manual step is still necessary because the software doesn't pick up everything. These manual checks - at least when I do them - take around 5-10 minutes per registration.
Now, this process worked really well for a couple of years while the 5 of us who started Filmwasters were all still frequent visitors to the site. Over the last 2-3 years however, our visits have dropped off a lot and we don't visit weekly sometimes, let alone several times a day like we used to. This means that admin tasks such as checking new registrations can really stack up. The fact that there are 5 of us who have admin rights to the forum means that on average we probably check registrations once a fortnight, but it can be longer (or shorter) between visits. This is - of course - very bad news for people who want to join the forum and who don't get their application accepted after a few hours.
In fact it's pretty inexcusable....and we're sorry, but there's nothing much we can do about other than try to do the admin chores more frequently than we currently are. Oh yeah, we also don't really check our Inbox very often either, so if you mail us to ask about where your registration has gone, we may not see it for months.
It comes across sometime as though we're being elitist and checking potential users' portfolios or something to see if they're worthy. The reality couldn't be further from the truth...as long as you're a real human, not a spammer and are interested in our type of photography then you are most welcome at FW.
Most aspects of the forum tick along well enough without us being involved day-to-day, but the new registrations issue is something we need to get better at if we're not going to upset people and lose a lot of friends.
If you're reading this post and are currently waiting for your sign up to be approved, I can only apologise for the delay and assure you that it's nothing personal.
