'Probie' Status for New Members

[Skydiver]

the vast majority of our folks have legitimate sockies. They're for RPG games and are quite responsible with them. We do have a few that are ornry and have or have had multiple identities.

needless to say, i'm not gonna illustrate how we suss out who they are.

as to IP's, I'm me, and have only been me...yet last time i looked at my IP report i had a few HUNDRED assigned to my username. Because when i access it at work i rotate through several, and every wiffy point i access has a new one, and my home now rotates through many...and i've never even tried the whole proxy server thing

If i can legitimately have a hundred+ IP's linked to my name, you can imagine what those that are dedicated to being ornry can do

[Colonel Sharp]

Wow, if you guys are willing to do this, then I'm all for ya!

Though to me it may seem a bit extreme...on the other hand, how many new members are there a day? I can't imagine it's an overwhelming amount...*Shrug*, again, it's up to you guys

[maylet]

That's a really good idea

[Skydiver]

says the person whose sig is a bit too large for our rules

[Skydiver]

which is why Probie status is a 'better' solution than locking things out

[Pharaoh Atem]

when will member registration be allowed start up again>???

[prion]

Frankly, if we weren't convinced that it is necessary to prevent DOS attacks, we wouldn't consider it. GW is just prominent enough now to be targeted, I guess.

actually, attacks have been increasing across the board, and dgeek.com, among other SG-related sites, got nailed.

[TameFarrar]

actually, attacks have been increasing across the board, and dgeek.com, among other SG-related sites, got nailed.

I feel for those Forums and their membership as well then
and its nice that some folks want to make sure GW never thinks to highly of itself so thanks for sharing

[TameFarrar]

Just making sure folks see this again since it was posted and created last year. The Probie Status is not new folks

[Skydiver]

And, it changed from its inception. Probies cannot

post visitor messages
send private messages
post group messages

Now visitor and group messages do post, but they have to be approved by a mod. This isn't how we wanted to do it, however we had a couple of spammers that joined, realized that they couldn't post their spam to the forum, thus instead sent out dozens of PM's and visitor messages to members, spamming them...so we had to turn off those features because once one finds out that loophole, more would follow and you guys would be getting deluged daily with spam. (every day we delete at least one and sometimes as many as ten spam messages)

we do recomment to all probies that you have fun in the forum first and perhaps refrain from joining any of the 'hurt and heal' or other vote counting games.

the mods clear queued posts as quickly as we can, but we do have lives and it may take an hour or three before your post is cleared, and in fast moving threads, that means you post can be pages and pages away from the 'bottom' or 'top' of the thread before it's cleared.

[iloveteyla]

How long is it before my posts will be displayed straight away ? its really annoying trying to answer people but then the post goes up the next day and the whole conversation is just ruined
thanks

[Pharaoh Atem]

only the mods know how probie status works. it's a combination of posts,rep received and how long you've been a member.

the settings are changed from time to time by darren. so that no one can figure it out. yes it's a pain but it has been so helpful in stopping spam.

just don't get discouraged

[iloveteyla]

Trouble is it is discouraging as you always seem out of sync with everything thats going on ,i can understand why they do it but surely if they have to read every post of mine before it can be viewed they can see im no spammer




oh it looks like it might be working now so please disregard all of the above

[Supreme Commander Sil]

This new system is kind of stupid.... If there's spam, it can just be reported ! The mods want a break though, I guess. They deserve one... possibly !

But I agree it's annoying. I have had unapproved visitor messages waiting for seemingly forever and they came up in my notifications ...
!
It's a shame, because when I was a probie, I was one for well over a year . Fortunately, I was long before this madness, but newer members are less fortunate ! I feel we won't gain terribly many permanent new members, because of this frustration ...

[Jper]

You can approve "unapproved VM" yourself though, can't you?