Member Validation/Approval

Do you require members to validate their e-mail address? And/or do you manually approve new registrations?

 

I require email verification because else many people use false emails + it is safer with email verification.

 

Typically, I require all newly registered members to validate their e-mail address - it's a simple process and clicking on a link to activate your account is not a daunting task. I'm always surprised about the number of members who find this validation process to be useless.

 

Yup, everyone must validate their email addresses, and if they don't the account gets deleted after ten days.

 

Michelle, do you find that some of your newly registered members make a fuss over such a process (as simple as it may be)?

 

I wouldn't call it a fuss, but some of the less tech-savvy new members actually have trouble with it. I end up approving many accounts manually.

 

Heh, so do I. That's always fun (easy but repetitive).

I find that at least a few newly registered members complain about the validation process each and every time, simply because they find it to be "a pain to have to check e-mail messages for such a silly thing".

 

And I'd say it would be a pain for me to delete the trolling posts of a user with no accountability or delete the bounced emails from hundreds of accounts with invalid email addresses

 

Because of the nature of my site, I do not require my members to validate their emails.

And, sites like gmail and hotmail were blocking a lot of the validation emails. So I was losing members by making them validate.

 

I never require e-mail validation. I think it's a hassle for new members that could already be posting or setting up their profile instead of going to another website to click a link. I know I hate doing it when I join a forum, so I don't make people do it when they join mine.

I have, however, manually approved accounts at one point. This was the first time I got hit with bots.

 

We've never required it for the same reason Savage X doesn't - it's just a hassle for new members. Before I installed Is Bot, we would require all first posts by users to be moderated. After I installed Is Bot, we no longer need to do that. The Promotion still runs to move the users from the Newly Registered group to the Registered group after one successful post (or a day), but we don't have moderation turned on the for the usergroup any longer (so the two usergroups are exactly the same at the moment).

 

Has that led to more spam/trolling for you to deal with, or about the same?

 

We used to get a ton of spam here (when the site was dormant for almost a year) but I cleaned it all up and set it up so that the first post of new members has to be approved. After getting back into the swing of things, I turned it off to make the posting process as hassle-free as possible.

For some reason, we haven't had a single spam attempt since we've been back online. (E-mail verification is disabled here).

 

Really? Not one? What's your secret? What anti-spam measures are you using?

 

Okay, between the time I made that post and now, we had one spam attempt the other day.

My secret isn't a big one. I just use the vBulletin reCaptcha verification in conjunction with the NoSpam! modification from vBulletin.org. I've been running this combination on my Linnie Forum for as long as reCaptcha has been available, and I haven't had a single spam attempt. Here, I've only had one.
Either my sites aren't the targets for spammers, or the security measures I'm using work well.

 

I use both methods.

For Setsou Design, I activate accounts manually and for Bird is the Word, no e-mail verification is enabled.

 

No, members register then do what they want.

 

That's not good.

 

That is your opinion, a member is a member. If people sign up to spam then I let them. It gives my board more posts and the user gets IP banned.

 

Different strokes.