New Member Registration Cut Off 28 July 2022

[Ron Besser]

Dear Members,
It is with regret I had to close an open registration form to join this web site as it is an inundation I cannot handle mostly by people who email forms like ours to spam the proceedings.  Yesterday after opening we had 25 subscription requests mostly from ISP's known for their spam practices, and this morning (the 28th) before 8am, we had over 200 attempts to join.  I cannot handle any of that horde to discriminate what might be genuine to approve as it will likely turn into inappropriate postings from drugs to purses and I refuse to subject ourselves to such a practice anymore.


What caused me to open registration early yesterday was the fact I cleaned up the membership list earlier and discovered of the about 100 members on the forum, about 25 of them are dead registration uses with no posts for years in some cases.  I eliminated the dead brush which was about 22 or 23 names, and saw because there was no open registration we could not add members to the list.


But today is not like it was even a few years ago and we have people all over the world looking for free advertising space, and when a forum like ours opens registrations, we become a free advertising closet for anything hunting such a place.  I cannot go through hundreds of applications and have any sense which is here to spam and who might be genuinely interested which I am sure a few were but had to be cut as I had no idea who they are and their motivation.  I am generally informing you of this attempt and it ending within 24 hours of initiating it.  Thank you for your attention.

Ron Besser

[amethyst]

It is a shame that this is what our world has come to, but very understandable why this had to be done.  I think we all have problems like this with our personal email accounts. Even most of my phone calls(about 90%) are spam and fishing expeditions.  What about if an active member will vouch for an individual that they believe is genuinely  interested?  

[Ron Besser]

Amethyst, I have the same thing here at home.  I get maybe 10 to 20 calls a week, and more, just spam and fishing and I have taken not to answering the phone unless I see a number or a name I know.  The phone has become a difficult object to deal with in the house and that is ridiculous and should be illegal.  IT is commercial  harassment.


Now as to the Registration device on this software we use for the discussion forum.  We updated the software to a new version months ago.  The new version does not contain the box that allows me to set tests for who can ask for registration by presenting a qualifying question to examine them first.  Anyone who has read anything of the Urantia Book or even not so but was curious about it, knows earth is called Urantia.  A simple question in the box is, what is the universe name for our earth?
Spammers and advertisers do not bother to know anything and quite often the sign up for registration can be automated by some ISP's.  For that reason then the question is simple and a valid way to sort a lot of them out.  Yet the new software cut that box out.  Now we are faced with either finding a way to encode our software with a box we supply somehow but I doubt we can do.


I am quite happy to have someone vouch for a new member, but there is no way to know who that new member might be unless some one who is a member here sends me an email that someone so and so would like to be a member.  I am happy to register them for them to try it out.  But I do not remember any member in the history of our discussion form actually doing that.  I cut those registered with more than 365 days without being on the forum and that brings us down to about 82 members or so from the 100 we had recently.  While we have trimmed things up, we have also come to recognize we need some fresh blood, but it is daunting to see the abuse that opens our doors too, and I am not capable of sorting hundreds of applications at once.  We need a way to sort requests.


We share your misery and disgust at the misuse of nearly everything today for the dollar.  I thank you for your post.


Ron