Forum Registrations

General and high profile video game topics.
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VideoGameCritic
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Forum Registrations

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 15th, 2025, 6:21 pm

Some of you may have noticed we've temporarily disabled the user registration function. That's because we recently had a flurry of spam users - mostly coming from Russia. Don't they have anything better to do over there?

The moderators and I have had to deal with this on occasion. It's a pain because we have to go in and clear out those phony registrations.

I was thinking about setting aside a certain day - like the first of each month - to allow new users to register, and have it disabled the rest of the month.

In the meantime if anybody REALLY wants to register now you can contact me by email and we'll set up something.

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Retro STrife
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Joined: August 3rd, 2015, 7:40 pm

Re: Forum Registrations

Postby Retro STrife » January 15th, 2025, 9:53 pm

Thanks for posting this! It’s always nice to have new users on the forums, so it sucks when this happens. If there are any interested “lurkers” out there, I would just add the following:

When a new user wants to sign up for the forums, a moderator has to verify it’s a real person and then approve them. If there is anyone reading this who has tried to register in the past and not been approved, it’s probably for one of two reasons:
1. We’ve had a swarm of these bot sign-ups at times, so some real sign-ups get lost in the shuffle.
2. Or your registration was checked, but seemed like a potential bot, so the approval was denied.

To VGC’s point, if you’ve tried to sign-up in the past and not been approved, and you really would like to join, then sending an email is the best bet at that point.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Forum Registrations

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 28th, 2025, 7:19 pm

For those who have been interested in having your own forum account, I'm going to enable the user registration feature sometime this Saturday, February 1st. For a limited time only. Maybe a few days. I have to disable it a lot of the time to keep the spammers away.

It will be nice to have an account when the new comments feature kicks in!

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Forum Registrations

Postby VideoGameCritic » February 1st, 2025, 11:10 am

The user registration feature is now active, in case anybody wants to join the forums.

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Retro STrife
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Joined: August 3rd, 2015, 7:40 pm

Re: Forum Registrations

Postby Retro STrife » February 12th, 2025, 1:53 am

We closed up registrations again a few days ago. We'll likely reopen a window in early March again.

TO ANY READERS WHO HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO REGISTER:
Most of our registrations are spam, so we ban most of the new sign-ups. We're overly cautious with it, so I'm sure I've banned some legitimate users in the process. If you've tried registering and can't get approved, please contact VideoGameCritic by email listed on this site, or you might reach him on social media channels. We can patch it through. The same is true if anyone sees this when registrations are closed- we could open it up if someone reaches out with interest.

LuckyWDFN
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Joined: August 15th, 2017, 9:50 am

Re: Forum Registrations

Postby LuckyWDFN » February 12th, 2025, 8:43 am

I think this is a great strategy and I've seen it implemented in other forums.

Another tactic is to allow people to register whenever but they're not allowed to post for 30 days or so after they've registered and have been approved - the spammers abandon the account when they can't post immediately and the good posters / new members get 30 days or so to get used to the site and excited to belong and contribute.


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