User registration

[Ronin Storm]

Quick poll for you, based on the following information:

We get 2-3 spam registrations every day.

We get roughly 1 legitimate registration every month.

Conservatively, therefore, we get over 60 times more spam registrations than real ones.

I'd like to close public registration in place of Admin-only registration (i.e. if you want an account, ask an Admin).

The poll basically is to assess whether this'll actually cause you guys n gals pain.

Poll is public.

 

[Haven]

Could we allow mods to approve registrations as well? Fine with it other than that.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Could we allow mods to approve registrations as well? Fine with it other than that.

Yeah, we should be able to set that up. It'd involve actually providing them with some Junior Admin privs, but that shouldn't be a big issue.

 

[Nanor]

Yeah, could be a bit inconvenient for members who stumble upon the website but I reckon most people are guided here by a current member.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Yeah, could be a bit inconvenient for members who stumble upon the website but I reckon most people are guided here by a current member.

All "recent" registrations have been direct referrals.

 

[VibroAxe]

How difficult is it to allow admin auth rather than admin creation. This would enable people to create an initial account, and then have an admin only forum which they have to post in to get account fully enabled.

Admins will effectively get a quiet ping and any spam doesn't effect the general masses. Whilst we still end up with people able to reg themselves.

We have a large enough admin team I don't think the extra posts should really effect us time wise, It could largely be ignored most of the time?

 

[Ronin Storm]

How difficult is it to allow admin auth rather than admin creation.

It'd be possible for all registrations to be moderated, which is to say require approval. However, I don't know if this does quite what we intend. It'd both need investigation and, if appropriate, permissions changing to make the moderated accounts basically inactive until approved.

We have a large enough admin team I don't think the extra posts should really effect us time wise, It could largely be ignored most of the time?

In part, that's because I intercept 99% of all potential spammers before they even completely register, and that's on the understanding that the automated blocks stop 99% of the total volume, so I'm just trimming down what comes through after that. The ones that actually get to spam I either gave the benefit of the doubt (they hadn't met sufficient criteria for me to verify them as a spammer in advance) or because they register, verify and post in the bracket when I'm sleeping.

The potential spam volume is probably 20-50 times what you see right now, on accounts that can bypass the automated filtering.

All this for allowing in the one account a month that is legitimate (if that).

 

[Ronin Storm]

So, I've closed public registration. Still need to make sure more people can actually create new user accounts but, until I sort that, I'm going to assume that new registrants are going to be friends with existing registered users. That being so, please would the existing registered user drop me a PM with the potential new user's email address and I'll contact them to create their account.

We'll sort something better but that'll suffice for now.