To avoid cluttering up the "read this before registering" (registration) page, I decided to create a dedicated page to explain our registration process.
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As mentioned on the registration page, an administrator approves all new members. That's generally me. Here's what I do:
1. I find your IP address, add the word "spam" and pop it into Google (example). If I come up with any hits, I just delete your account.
2. I check your partial IP address and the word "spam" (example). If I come up with any hits, I will set your registration to "ignore" for a week and wait for you to contact me. If I don't hear from you, I just delete your account.
3. If you pass steps 1 & 2, I pop the e-mail address you registered with into Google to see if there are any hits (example). I'm just seeing if the e-mail has been blocked by another website and/or if there are hits for pr0n websites. In the former case, I'll probably contact you before accepting your registration. In the latter case, I'll probably just delete you and assume that you mistyped "sax" when you Googled us.
Please note that I'm not cross-checking dozens of websites or anything. 99% of the time the info I want will be on the first page of Google results. That 1% of the time, I'll skip the above procedure, set the account to "ignore" and await the registrant's e-mail.
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This procedure is surprisingly effective. Adding a human element (another Admin or me) into the equation allows us to save this community from an awful lot of spam. However, if we start getting more than a dozen registrants per day, I'll have to modify this procedure.
Oh. I should mention that I've used this procedure for about two years and we had a "please type in the word of the day to register"-type system for longer than that. I've had one complaint in all that time. The complaint was in the form of, "You're not that popular of a website. How could you possibly get so much spam that you need to do a Word-of-the-Day and an admin has to register you?!" I, of course,signed up that person on 153 spam websites apologized and told the prospective member that yes, we do get lots of spam.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please post below!
=========
As mentioned on the registration page, an administrator approves all new members. That's generally me. Here's what I do:
1. I find your IP address, add the word "spam" and pop it into Google (example). If I come up with any hits, I just delete your account.
2. I check your partial IP address and the word "spam" (example). If I come up with any hits, I will set your registration to "ignore" for a week and wait for you to contact me. If I don't hear from you, I just delete your account.
3. If you pass steps 1 & 2, I pop the e-mail address you registered with into Google to see if there are any hits (example). I'm just seeing if the e-mail has been blocked by another website and/or if there are hits for pr0n websites. In the former case, I'll probably contact you before accepting your registration. In the latter case, I'll probably just delete you and assume that you mistyped "sax" when you Googled us.
Please note that I'm not cross-checking dozens of websites or anything. 99% of the time the info I want will be on the first page of Google results. That 1% of the time, I'll skip the above procedure, set the account to "ignore" and await the registrant's e-mail.
===============
This procedure is surprisingly effective. Adding a human element (another Admin or me) into the equation allows us to save this community from an awful lot of spam. However, if we start getting more than a dozen registrants per day, I'll have to modify this procedure.
Oh. I should mention that I've used this procedure for about two years and we had a "please type in the word of the day to register"-type system for longer than that. I've had one complaint in all that time. The complaint was in the form of, "You're not that popular of a website. How could you possibly get so much spam that you need to do a Word-of-the-Day and an admin has to register you?!" I, of course,
If you have any questions or suggestions, please post below!