I found this site while looking for advice on my dog's behavior, but boy, registering here has been endlessly painful. This site is a wonderful idea, and I'm really looking forward to interacting with the community here. However, if any developers catch wind of this, I suggest that, if possible, you revise the account creation process. Luckily, I'm stubborn enough to sit through it, but you're probably loosing potential members to confusion and frustration. But hey, I'm excited to talk once I'm all registered!
The Pain of Account Creation
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Joined
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11,435 Posts
You make a post, you wait a bit, then you can post. A lot better than having the forum buried in spam to the point that the moderators go crazy trying to keep up with it and real posts are unseen in the deluge of bots/spam.
Joined
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3 Posts
I agree, i found it challenging as well. In fact, I have tried to post my question but i dont have permission yet and I have already posted in the (new members post) as they suggest. This is just a dog forum, not sure why all the restrictions and complexity
Joined
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12,056 Posts
Did you read the part that says it takes 60-90 minutes after you make that introductory post before you can post to other forums? That's a system limitation, not by design.
Before we had the introductory post requirement, I used to spend two hours each day cleaning spam out of the forums
Joined
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2,451 Posts
Personaly I'm glad it's so difficult to join now. They do it to protect us. Before all of the restrictions our inboxes used to be flooded with spam and links to computer viruses. The Admin didn't just put up a bunch of walls overnight, every restriction and hurdle that has been implemented has been in direct response to those how intentionally join to cause harm to the forum and its members. That's also why this forum is so great compared to many of the other options out there. The members here have made the effort to become members and share their knowledge with like minded individuals
You know, I tried replying to your message the day I registered, and the reply just vanished when I hit "post" because my account wasn't activated. I will say, an error message would have been cool. I spent a good while writing my reply! But hey, better late than never, right?
I completely understand wanting to avoid spam. It would be pretty annoying, especially on a smaller community like this one. But, I'd also like to point out that while registering for this site, I noticed some serious flaws in the human verification step that are likely the source of the spam issues the other replies are mentioning.
The first verification step is a program similar to captcha called SOLVEmedia. This is the first problem, and possibly the biggest. See, the infamous distorted text of captchas has a purpose beyond giving people headaches. It's very easy to program a bot that can read text, and because of that, SOLVEmedia is pretty much giving away accounts to spammers like Oprah. Captcha systems aren't foolproof, no, but they're much stronger than SOLVEmedia, which is about as effective a barrier as a piece of paper. In addition, the two security questions are also useless. They never change. Just program the answers into the bot program, and boom, you're in.
It seems to me that the site is just piling verification processes on top of each other, making the registration more lengthy each time. You've gotta answer the SOLVEmedia question, answer two redundant security questions, verify your email, make a post in this topic, and wait 60-90 minutes for someone to confirm that you're a person, with no way to tell when you're finally registered. I can sign up for any other website in five minutes, but this place will take me at least an hour. Why? Other sites fix the root of the issue. Replace SOLVEmedia with an effective program. Use verification codes if you've gotta. You're making it harder for everyone!
Please understand that I don't mean any of this as an insult. I'm just trying to give tips to improve your site, and I completely understand if budget or design limitations prevent these solutions from being a reality. I mean this as nothing but friendly suggestion.
I completely understand wanting to avoid spam. It would be pretty annoying, especially on a smaller community like this one. But, I'd also like to point out that while registering for this site, I noticed some serious flaws in the human verification step that are likely the source of the spam issues the other replies are mentioning.
The first verification step is a program similar to captcha called SOLVEmedia. This is the first problem, and possibly the biggest. See, the infamous distorted text of captchas has a purpose beyond giving people headaches. It's very easy to program a bot that can read text, and because of that, SOLVEmedia is pretty much giving away accounts to spammers like Oprah. Captcha systems aren't foolproof, no, but they're much stronger than SOLVEmedia, which is about as effective a barrier as a piece of paper. In addition, the two security questions are also useless. They never change. Just program the answers into the bot program, and boom, you're in.
It seems to me that the site is just piling verification processes on top of each other, making the registration more lengthy each time. You've gotta answer the SOLVEmedia question, answer two redundant security questions, verify your email, make a post in this topic, and wait 60-90 minutes for someone to confirm that you're a person, with no way to tell when you're finally registered. I can sign up for any other website in five minutes, but this place will take me at least an hour. Why? Other sites fix the root of the issue. Replace SOLVEmedia with an effective program. Use verification codes if you've gotta. You're making it harder for everyone!
Please understand that I don't mean any of this as an insult. I'm just trying to give tips to improve your site, and I completely understand if budget or design limitations prevent these solutions from being a reality. I mean this as nothing but friendly suggestion.
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