Posting where people are most likely to look, and where non-members can see it
First off, an enormous thank you to our admins, without whom this site would not exist.
If I had to manage this site alone, it would have gone away a couple of years ago.
Additionally, a huge thank you to our members, whose experience and expertise we draw on daily. Without you, there is no reason for this community to exist.All of these people give their time freely, despite most having full time work or businesses (or both), families, responsibilities, lives, etc outside of the alley.
Additionally, I hear that from time to time, some of us even get to ride our motorcycles.
I apologize to both of the above groups for what you're about to read.
Here are the facts:
* Banditalley rejects approximately one hundred spammers a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Many are rejected even before they register, through special software installed on the site.
* All of the registrations that the site cannot filter out as spammers on its own have to be evaluated individually and manually by an admin prior to approval or rejection. Knowing that this process is difficult with usually only an email address and a username to go on, sometimes we have to make a judgment call on whether a registration is a legitimate member to be, or a spammer. Sometimes we call it wrong.
* Once upon a time, Banditalley was overrun by spammers. Since that time, we have put measures in place to stop spammers from ruining our forums and community. These measures include the approval process that all members who registered in the last couple of years had to go through when you registered here, and an inability to post in, or search the forums without logging in.
How do we tell who's a spammer and who isn't?
Sometimes we can tell by googling an email address, and seeing what sorts of social commentary a person is posting and using that email address.
* If we find that someone is posting nude pictures of someone (yes, it's happened and been found), or exhibiting rude behaviour, we may reject the registration.
* If their username looks like it's gibberish ( a common spammer tactic) we may reject the registration.
* If someone's email address or username is offensive, we may reject the registration.
* Invalid email addresses are rejected immediately.
* Rejection doesn't imply that we've found the person who registered to be personally lacking, only that we couldn't determine definitively that they were not a bot or a spammer.
One thing that we requested many months ago was that after a person registers, that they respond to the email that they get the welcome message from and say "Hey! I'm a human, not a Bot!" or similar.
We did this via a post that's been stickied, and also in the welcome message email.
This lowered our false rejections by easily half.
Some people read the welcome message, or the post and follow one small instruction that we've asked them to follow, and on the average find themselves activated very quickly, because we don't have to do the investigation that I mention above.
Others do not read this stuff, and I find that they fall into 3 categories:
1. One of the admins have found the time to evaluate the account, and has approved it.
2. One of us evaluates an account, and rejects it, based on a search they've done, or the email address (gmail accounts for instance are most likely to be rejected because easily 80% of the gmail registrations we get are spammers), or sometimes on gut feel
Note: Anytime we reject an account, unless it's 100%, we always ask the forum software to send a rejection notice. This message also says if you think that this rejection is in error, please reply and let us know. When someone does say "Hey! I want to join", typically we respond to the member-to-be and have them re-register and everything is fine.
3. One of us rejects an account, and rejects it, for any of the above reasons, and the member-to-be sends back a snotgram.
Definition of snotgram:
A missive from a person who feels like they've personally been slighted and need to take it out on someone.
This sort of communication typically involves an inability to accept one's role in a situation, and all sorts of blaming of other people.
Often it contains such inane statements as "I don't know why you do X, because it's just plain stupid" as though the author is an authoritative expert on the subject.
Typically its "tone of voice" doesn't propel the reader to want to go out of their way to do something that the author wanted.
Now the rant:
Whatever happened to manners? When did all of the content on the Internet become something that people felt they were entitled to, regardless of how it came to be on the internet?
When did people stop taking responsibility for their actions, and believing that they have control of the process that others use to accomplish something?
Membership to this site is not a right, nor is access to its content.
This site is membership only. The fact that we leave so much of our content out for people to see allows people to learn from our content without having to even sign up.
We offer our expertise, our experiences, our resources, and our community freely, and that's what makes the Bandit Alley community, and dare I say "family", so incredible.
Even once people chose to join the forums, we do not demand payment, even though the forums and other resources often represent a not insignificant savings in time and money to our members, I know that it saved me literally thousands when I first started riding.
And no, I'm not looking to change this paradigm, as long as the Alley can support itself on donations.
As far as I can see, there are three main reasons to join this site:
1. To post and contribute to the community.
2, To be able to search the forums for information
3. To access content that we have in the secured areas of the site.
Since I'm seeing a predominate number of registrations that never post a single thing, and only log in once, I can assume from that that #3 is a significant reason for people to join this forum.
All that we ask when someone joins is that they help us to recognize that are a legitimate member-to-be, and to go through an approval process that helps to keep the BanditAlley experience a pleasant and safe one.
The same people protesting our process are the same ones that would protest the spammer activity.
Know that the few minutes of inconvenience that you suffer allows us to make your longer term stay in the community more enjoyable.
This process will not change.
As of this moment, any and all snotgrams will be considered to be a withdrawl of interest to join the forums.
Any comments via email or the forums that could be construed as abuse towards an admin or a member will be construed as a withdrawl of interest in the forums.
Any comments that are hateful in nature, or abusive may be forwarded to the author's ISP.
I'm sick and tired of rude people who think that they are entitled to shit on everyone else.
I may not be able to do anything about it at my job.
I may not be able to do anything about it in traffic.
I am damn well not going to put up with it on BanditAlley.
BanditAlley belongs to all of us, but as the leader that you have all nominated, if I find anyone shitting in the sandbox, I will forcibly make them leave.
I am a mean SysAdmin if I need to be, and I'm not afraid to clear a path.
stormi,
your BOFH
Now good night. Apparently I need a time out.
Topic: A thank you, and a rant, new registrations and jerks (Read 19431 times)