A note to new registrants

[Fred]

Thanks to the torrent of spammers, we've been forced to block all new members from posting until we can approve them. It might take a day for the approval and we're sorry for the delay. As an example, today we had one new user and 14 new spammers. None of the spammers made it to the site to post.

If you located in China or Russia with an email address ending in .cn or .ru, please email so that we can register you. Your entire country is on our ban list.

We appreciate your patience. It is the only way we know to keep spam off the site.

[Timothy]

Fred,

You are missing the ball on this. It is shameful!

[Octaveman]

There are many forums that do this and even some make you write an essay explaining why you want to join before being allowed in and it's these forums that have upwards of 35,000 members and counting.

This is not something out of the ordinary nor detrimental to the purpose of this forum. No ball has been missed. Matter of fact, it's a complete recognition of the times we live in and is a necessary action to take to keep these forums spam free.

[Fred]

Fred,

You are missing the ball on this. It is shameful!

Shameful or otherwise, that's the way it is.

[Fred]

I think this may have been having an impact. We haven't had a spam post for several days. I've been deleting about 20 new user requests per day. It's a little hard with some to tell the spam from the real new users so I may have let a few spammers through. But so far so good. Trust me, the old way was easier.

[Sullybob]

I for one like not having all the spam. It should not be a deal for a potential member to wait for his account to be validated as a real account vs a spammer.
Nothing shameful with keeping out the spammers.

[thombrogan]

What Shawn said times nine!

I like when OT is about birthdays, new homes, and other ways to find common ground besides food, not free software and live webcams.

[MartinPiller]

Not so long ago, there was a post in the OT forum having a misleading title. When I opened this post, it showed explicit porn content. I find that quite disturbing and disgusting. Why do they post it here anyway?

"Please leave us alone" doesn't seem to work. My opinion is that people who (want to) post such items in a serious forum like FF are sick people that must not be granted access; even if the extra cost for others is a little patience at registration. Most people who register don't make a post within the first 24 hours I guess.

Just my opnion and I strongly support Fred's initiative.

Martin

[Fred]

It is a form of advertising. Obviously, legitimate companies don't advertise that way so the spam is always garbage. There is no way to eliminate spam. All we can do is hope to deflect it elsewhere so we don't need to deal with it ourselves. We will still get some spam. But I don't think we will get as much as before.

[ksskss]

Much like having keys on doors is a PITA or having a password on an account, it's a shame that Fred has to do this. He's just responding to a problem we all have on the net and with life in general. I fully support what Fred is doing as a service to all of us here. Last I heard, there's no global porn shortage crisis, so those so inclined should have little trouble finding it elsewhere. Unfortunately, like junk mail and viruses, some will probably get through, but this approach should help.

To be very blunt about this topic, I learnt long ago that these types of sites not only provide porn, but are accompanied by spyware viruses etc etc and for that reason alone these types of sites are to be avoided - the porn is generally associated with people who don't respect you and want to keep you as virus free as the people they are showing to you. There is a criminal element that goes beyond the porn component here. While I'm not trying to be prudish, I am saying that there are problems beyond just the obvious porn that these types of sites cause, so Fred is actually doing us all a bigger favor than some might realize.

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Ken