Is the forum missing out on new members?

moxhamj

New Member
Recently a colleague (Ok a forum regular. Oh, Ok it was Manuka) asked if I could help get someone onto the forum as he had not been able to. This is rather embarrassing to admit but I've not managed to have any luck either. And I thought being a moderator gave one Super Powers to fly etc *grin*.

In researching this I've found pages and pages of new members who have never posted. I very much hope they have not given up and gone away. Obviously there is a need to get the balance between spam bots and allowing real members on, but anyway, this is my experience:

1) New user tries to log in. Email rejected (possibly because it is Gmail)
2) I log out of my user and log in as a new user using his (supplied) username and password.
3) My application is rejected because 'that email is already in use'.
4) Reapplied using my backup hotmail email account. Forum asks for some characters to be typed etc. Advises that an email has been sent that can activate the account.
5) Checked email account - email not there. Tested sending from other accounts and email is definitely working.
6) Tried to log in as new member. Forum does allow login for that member but does not allow posting (as the account is not activated).
7) Logged out and logged in as myself. Scrolled through pages of users, most of whom have never posted anything. Unable to find this new user, so unable to edit their details.
8) Tried logging out from my account and logging in as the new user and editing the details. It allows changing the password (and does send that message to the email), but the account is still not activated.
9) Tried deleting the user from my account but unable to find the user.

So the new user is kind of stuck in a forum limbo/purgatory. Unable to post because the account cannot be activated. But unable to be found and edited because they are not yet official.

And this user wants to have a particular username and password so creating another new account is not really a solution.

Any help would be most appreciated solving this particular problem, but in a general sense, is there a block on certain emails? And if people are giving up and never posting, would we ever know?

And in a "Grumpy Old Man" tone, "How come the spammers can get through this process when normal human beings cannot?!"

Help would be very much appreciated. I want to get this new user on because he has a cool picaxe project to share.
 

westaust55

Moderator
Members unable to complete registration

With respect to the number of members who are non posters, this was discussed under forum statistics recently. Suggestion was that many are students who need to register to access the Programming Editor. Thereafter, maybe they follow the teachers instructions and have no further need of this forum :(

As gmail is operated by Google, has your friend tried to establish a Yahoo account? Yahoo accounts do work.

Has your fried tried to actually post on the forum?


A recent example/case was member Janne who apparently did not receive an email to complete registration but has still managed to post on this forum.
See
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11266
 

manuka

Senior Member
Yes- on my earlier suggestion Gmail apparently also tried. This poor soul (a retired hobbyist,& not Kiwi but a resident of Adelaide -as too is Dr_A) has become most frustrated. He's developed some clever PICAXE data logging circuitry in spite of this hassle, & it's annoying that we can't accept him on board...
 

moxhamj

New Member
Tried posting just now on his account and error message "you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:
Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation."
 

moxhamj

New Member
Thanks 212 very good point. But I just checked it now and no. The message has disappeared into the aether...
 

LizzieB

Senior Member
If gmail is blocked (and that does appear to be the case) then it would be courteous to have a note to that effect on the signup page.

I also didn't see any alternative (audio) option for the captcha.

I tried signing up again using an email domain that has previously worked with this forum and so far have not received a confirmation email so there may be something broken there.

As for the % of non posters, my experience is that even on a busy support forum where there is open access to images and downloads (so no compelling reason to register) 50% of confirmed members never post.
 

frank_p

Member
Did this gentleman check with his ISP. Some ISP's use spam engines that for some reasons automatically block emails not only with specific content but also coming from server names containing specific keywords, in this case might be "forum".

I know about this because i myself couldn't forward mail from a mailbox in Europe to a mailbox in China because of this. The reason was that they blocked a string which happens to be part of the chinese server. After a long and heated discussion i managed to convince them to fix this.

Please be aware that most ISP's do not have any grudge with anyone in particular, because the software they use is just installed on their machine "AS IS". And this is what causes all the trouble.
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
You may have a point Dr_Acula.
A few months ago I had quite a few PMs from new members stating that they could not post. Like you, I was unable to assist and suggested that they e-mail direct to Admin.
Several gave up and have not been seen since, stating that Admin never replied.

In defense, I also know a few that never bothered to acknowledge the 'activation' e-mail, and hence could not post.
 

westaust55

Moderator
Missing emails for forum registration

Then there are organisations/software such as SPAMCOP which ISP’s use that block emails. To my knowledge (from past experience with others sending me email ages ago), SPAMCOP sends the originator a message to say it has been blocked but if Rev Ed have an auto generate function for emails to cover completion of registration to the forum then they might not see such messages.

http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml
 

Dippy

Moderator
In addition; a colleague of mine tried to register and couldn't get past the securty thing where you type in the characters in the image.
I tried on his behalf 11 times without success - so both of us are obviously blind or cack-handed.

I understand (and appreciate) the reasons for having it, but blimey!

There may be dozens of potential new users who are as blind as us.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Registration Process

1) New user tries to log in. Email rejected (possibly because it is Gmail)
Due to the large amount of pornographic spam generated by bots using gmail addresses those are no longer accepted.

It is a shame that the owners of gmail do not do more to prevent this so legitimate users are not affected.


So the new user is kind of stuck in a forum limbo/purgatory. Unable to post because the account cannot be activated. But unable to be found and edited because they are not yet official.
There is a kind of "limbo" between registering and becoming official. This is because of the process which is needed to limit the ever increasing amount of spam and particularly pornographic spam the forum would otherwise receive.

To do the job thoroughly requires manual intervention and this is unfortunately not always immediate. Thus there will be a delay between registering and being able to use the forum fully. How long that takes varies, particularly depending on when staff are available to process registration requests.

Rev-Ed staff do try and process registrations as quickly as possible and work outside of local office hours and through holidays to ensure delays are minimised but sometimes delays may be longer than others. This will particularly be the case outside office hours, at weekends, and during holidays.

Ideally registration and authorisation would be immediate however the spammers, pornographic spammers and email account providers who do little to prevent such use have made that impossible.


And this user wants to have a particular username and password so creating another new account is not really a solution.
No one should expect to get a particular username, no matter how desirable that is for them.

Where a username becomes blocked or is inaccessible for some reason, Rev-Ed can resolve the issue but this does create extra workload as this needs to be investigated on a case by case basis to prevent account hijacking etc. If it's a simple case that the registration process has not yet completed, that should resolve itself with time.


And in a "Grumpy Old Man" tone, "How come the spammers can get through this process when normal human beings cannot?!"
I think everyone will note there has been very little ( if any ) spam which has got through recently so the process for preventing that is working well, despite the workload it creates.

Normal people can get through the process, but one has to allow time for the process to complete.
 

moxhamj

New Member
@Hippy "If it's a simple case that the registration process has not yet completed, that should resolve itself with time."

Thankyou for that. Does that mean there is a timeout on the limbo status, and does it automatically default to working or non working?

I suppose I should add that I'm now getting PMs saying "I can't register!"

Potential problems appear to be 1) what do you do if the registration email gets lost, 2) What if you can't read the letters (I got that to work on the 3rd go), and 3) how do you ask for help if you can't post.

Re 3), if it would help, I'd be happy to take a share of those emails if Admin is getting inundated. But not all of them. Maybe share them out a bit in some way?
 

Technical

Technical Support
Staff member
We have just amended the registration on-screen text to state that gmail accounts are not accepted. Almost all the porn spam links that have plagued this forum (and many other forums) in the past have come from these free accounts.

We have also simplified the 'text verification' to make it easier to read, and will monitor if this affects the spam level, which we are determined to keep at very low levels.

We are aware that a small number of ISPs block email messages from the forum. For that reason we monitor the registrations and manually register legitimate accounts almost every working day (Mon-Fri). So those who do not receive the email should wait a day or so and then try to post again. The other option is for the user to try an alternate email provider.
 

Janne

Senior Member
Hello. If you look at my registration date, you can see that i'm a rather new member.

I too had problems with my account. I never received an activation email, and got pretty frustrated. I wrote an email about it to tech support(in the same email i asked about the non-funktioning usb-cable) but never got any response. However, i think someone fixed my account, as i've yet to receive the activation email in my inbox, but still i'm able to post.

edit. my email wasn't any of these hotmail/ gmail / other trash
 

moxhamj

New Member
Many thanks Technical. I appreciate it is a balance.

Re manaully checking registrations, I wonder if that could be stated on the signup form as well? Maybe that could be helpful - so even if a registration does not go through at least the user knows that sometime in the next few days it will be fixed?
 

LizzieB

Senior Member
We have just amended the registration on-screen text to state that gmail accounts are not accepted. Almost all the porn spam links that have plagued this forum (and many other forums) in the past have come from these free accounts.
Thanks!

We have also simplified the 'text verification' to make it easier to read, and will monitor if this affects the spam level, which we are determined to keep at very low levels.
Why not switch to reCaptcha? That has been very a very effective anti-bot tool on a (non vbulletin) forum I moderate, and it has an audio alternative.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Re reCaptcha

I won't criticise the idea but it does perhaps explain why I've run into problems in some of my own registrations elsewhere, the words being so meaningless or unclear to me I'm not sure what I'm meant to type, so don't, try the next, or give up. Maybe I've had a bad batch.

The ones of the form "which letters have a cat attached" drive me insane. I seem to be unable to identify which are cats and which are something else.
 

LizzieB

Senior Member
That's interesting, I'll play with ours and see if I have the same experience. We switched to it during the spambot attack (that had apparently broken regular captcha) on SMF forums a few months ago and haven't heard any complaints.

I was too embarrassed to report how much trouble I had with the captcha's on this forum last night, but now I see I'm not alone...

I guess accessibilty isn't such an issue in the UK?
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Accessibility's a reasonable issue in the UK - and I'm often one of the first to complain about such problems - but I have to say that I personally didn't have any problem with the Rev-Ed captchas when I did some testing this morning. I think it's definitely the case that some people cope better with one sort than another. I suppose the fundamental problem is that as soon as one starts distorting things and making them more obscure to prevent computer cracking it's inevitably also going to have an impact on real humans.
 

LizzieB

Senior Member
Sorry not to be clear, I was referring to there being no alternative offered to completing the captcha. I'm aware of folks who use text to speech and speech to text because of reading difficulties who nevertheless produce projects the equal of many described on here.
 

moxhamj

New Member
A followup post to say a big thankyou to Technical, Hippy et al. Especially for pointing out that new members in limbo do eventually get processed.

I left the account for this new member for a couple of days but did nothing more to it, and it is now activated and working fine.

I guess to focus on the bit that didn't work, it was the information that a non activated account will end up being activated within a few days.
 

mickm2au

Member
The New Member..

Hi, I'm the new member Dr A and Manuka have been helping.

I first tried to register with my email address at Australia's largest broadband ISP, so the problem wasn't with a freeby account, and got the message that this email address is banned, it was then that I tried with a Gmail address and got a message saying that there was a problem and to type what problem you were having in a message box and that some one would then reply to your email with an answer. I even put my ISP email address in the message but have never received a reply or confirmation. I have used the same email address to join many groups and forums and have never had a problem before.

I appreciate that there is a pretty big workload managing a forum and keeping out spam, but my experience had me just about ready to give up and call the forum a bad joke. Not sure what the answer is, just happy to be here.

I'll have a good look around and then post some info on my project soon.

Mickm2au
 

manuka

Senior Member
Dippy: Relax - he's over 3000 posts behind you yet! Us Kiwi's maintain most Australians are related to each other, but these two are over Moscow-London distances apart (> 3000km)
 
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Tinhorn

New Member
Test to see if I can post!

I'm one of those that signed on but never posted till now. I've been slowly soaking in the forum and would have eventually posted, as 212 would know

End of Test

Tinhorn
 

westaust55

Moderator
Dippy: Relax - he's over 3000 posts behind you yet! Us Kiwi's maintain most Australians are related to each other, but these two are over Moscow-London distances apart (> 3000km)
Be careful Stan.

I have had many phone calls from folks in NZ with the same surname,
all claiming to be related to me :rolleyes: - which is not the case. I have my family history traced back for the past few hundred years. Mine is a very small linage.
 

papaof2

Senior Member
We have a few more people in the US, so the odds of being mis-grouped by last name are higher. The most interesting one I've encountered was a phone call offering the position of Chief of Pediatrics at a hospital in another state: my first name, middle initial, and last name were an exact match for the person they were seeking.

John
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
The first thing I always get when I visit the 'states' is,
"do you know so and so, they live in England".
Like I know everyone in the UK!
 

Dippy

Moderator
When I last went to NY someone asked if I was Australian.
So, I asked if he was Canadian.
How we laughed...

BB, do you know Cyril Blenkinsop? He lives in the UK South Coast.
He has hair and a some arms if that helps?

And, according to my wife, he has at least 8 hands.
 
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BeanieBots

Moderator
No, but MY wife also knows a guy with 8 hands. I'll ask.

I've also had the "Australian?" remark a few times. Must try your reply next time!
 

Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
Yes. I'm 16, yet I joined in 1970.

A few years ago, the server crashed/had a midlife crisis/got confused, and reset everyones join date.

A
 

manuka

Senior Member
That date relates to the beginning of so called Unix time,an elapsed timing system widely used on Unix like operating systems. It's defined as the number of seconds (not counting leap seconds) elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (thus 00:00:00 UTC) on January 1st 1970. Some 39 years later, according to http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm , midnight Jan 10th 2009 has a Unix time stamp of 1,231,545,600
 
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