Admin Registration

[Inquisitor]

I dunno what to do about this.

I see we have two choices:

1) We leave it on admin approved, we have less porn and scammers, but more work and we might miss someone legit who has to wait.

2) Go back to the old way, turn it off, and we don't miss anyone, but we have more work in closing and clearing bots

Either way its more work

[Isileth]

Personally I see the links that get posted as being worse than someone having to wait a day or two to post. The fact is if there is an active player from each game on irc the names can get passed along very quickly so they could be sorted before an admin is forced to trawl through the list of new registrations.

[Stracius]

I'd prefer a method that doesn't a) inadvertently punish new (legitimate) users and b) rely on one, maybe two people to operate.

We have quite a few moderators spread out over time zones, bots are usually caught before I even see them. On the other hand, new users are forced to wait for an approval determined by the time zone, and whether the operator even visits the forum each day.

I'd also rather not make approving new accounts a job, as I suspect that it might be turning into for Anubis (or Inq?).

So, I'd rather take the bots than miss potential members. Most of the users here know how to ignore them, and the rest can be easily forewarned. Its the better inconvenience in my opinion.

[M.Steiner]

It's more more work either way, yes. However we have moderators assigned to each group forum, global moderators as well as the admins. So when bots get posted there are far more people able to deal with them, and from different time zones as well. You leave admin approval on and all thats left down to just a small few, even if they don't mind doing it (mainly Anny seems to be doing it atm?).

So yea, i'd say leave it turned off and share the workload out.

[Inquisitor]

Its actually a little more work to clear the bots and ban them. More people would be doable.

It would also be nice to have a full time SSX webdev. Judd's got a new job that I can't take time away from, Cheets is afk with Uni stuff.

If we could add some stuff to the forum, we might be able to curb the registrations as well.

[Anubis]

Personally, since Ive been the ones dealing with them of late, I prefer having it left on. In terms of workload that is the best option imo.

If we have approval on I get alerts for every account that registers that I can then check up on and activate/delete as necessary. Means that bots never (so far) actually get to the forum and that the accounts themselves are dealt with quick quickly rather than being left for months to build up into a full day's worth of work when it comes to clearing out the memberlist.

If approval gets turned off it means that each time I (or anyone else) come to check for bot accounts we have to tediously go and mess around with the memberlist, trying to remember which accounts we've checked are clean and which we haven't before taking any action if needed, which is irritating (which, incidentally, is why I was ignoring it until the problem got so big that it filled multiple pages of the memberlist with bots). It also means that bots have the chance to spam the forum before their accounts can be dealt with. We saw that with only 2 days with approval back off again we had the spam returning.

For me, having people have to wait a day or so (shouldn't be longer than this but I won't say may never be) for account activation isn't so bad if in return we're keeping the forum clean from the spam that's been hounding us of late.

I've been dealing with accounts mostly since admin activation has been on and to tell you the truth it isn't really that bad so long as I keep on top of it each day rather than letting them build up. I don't mind keeping on dealing with them if we leave approval on, and if we turn it off I'll do my best to keep on top of them through the memberlist. Its not a lot of work if I keep on top of it, but its more work with approval switched off.


As for an SSX webdev. I suppose I could take over the reigns fully of the main site if its needed, though it doesnt need to be updated that regularly as far as I know (save when we're adding new pages, the Voice Comms one still needs to go up etc). I actually need to do some work on it soon anyway since I'm trying to work out a way to incorporate the Scorched Lore that BD found without breaking the pages.

I'm not very good though with a lot of the stuff KJ has done, such as the Nav Manager and tools like that. My knowledge doesn't really extend far enough to be able to take the job of finishing/fixing things like that off his hands. If we can find someone to take this over though that'd be good. I know KJ mentioned at some point (I think when we last looked at loading times?) he has had other things to do atm, which is completely understandable, so helping him out in this area might be a good idea.

[esd]

I say leave it on, but have more people notified/able to activate new accounts.

[Ambush]

I believe if the workload is easier to deal with when the approval is on, then leave it on. I bet we get more bots than actual members anyway, so for those true members to wait 2-3 days to get on the boards is acceptable. I mean its easier to cut the bots off before they even become a member then it is after they have already posted, right?

[Inquisitor]

We really need a PHP guy with some time and that we trust.