You don't need to register an account anymore

[Rachael]

One frustrating aspect of many websites, especially smaller websites, is every single one of them seems to require your username, password, and email.

Of course, you might think "Oh, this is the way of the world, it's the age we live in, it's required for security, etc." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Requiring users to register on your site has never protected anyone from much, and given the low barrier of entry anyhow, all it does is take up time when you only want to do one thing. And why in the heck do they require that much information, anyway? What do they even do with it?!

So, effective now, you do not need an account to use these forums like a regular user. This is being done as a trial for now - if I like how it turns out, this may well stick forever.

You will need to make an account if any of the following become true, however:

• You are involved with a project hosted on DRD Team and need access to private forums
• You wish to send a private message
• You wish to protect your username (please make a post, too, so your account isn't pruned if you do that)
• You want your posts to appear instantly. Posts are entered into a queue to prevent spam until your registered account has reached at least one post to ensure you are not a spam bot.
• You need a user's contact information (info made public, such as email, IM, personal website, etc)

Because of this, the rules for keeping an account are going to become a little more strictly enforced:

• You will still need to email verify your account - failure to do so will result in it being pruned, eventually
• You will need to make at least one post on your account in order to keep it. Accounts more than a year old with 0 posts are typically removed. Make at least 1 post on your account, and you're good.

Please be aware that it is still just as easy to ban guests as it is a regular user. Because the warning system cannot be applied to guests, temp-bans will be more frequent for Guests since it's the only way we can tell you "don't do that!" - so don't abuse this privilege.

[Ribby]

Yay! Hooray! This is a very very cool thing.
I'm gonna start with some modding questions, might include projects later.

[FunnyBunny]

Ain't good idea to have this all can post feature. Hue.

[Rachael]

It's worked fine so far.

I decided that the hassle users have to go through to properly register and activate an account is not worth it. If someone wants to create one anyway, they are welcome to.

If you think there are reasons why I shouldn't, though, I am always open to suggestions.

In my opinion, forcing registrations just leaves your user database with useless clutter that no one (not even the original owner) will ever use.

[Gez]

Heck we've seen recently on the ZDoom forums that abandoned accounts originally made just to report a bug several years ago and then forgotten about are an easy prey for bruteforce kiddies.

[Rachael]

I can't dictate to the internet what everyone else should do, nor would I ever try.

But personally, I would like to see more webmasters follow in my footsteps, and try this. It makes a site so much more friendly to a casual visitor and it doesn't cause that much of a moderation headache except possibly on really big forums that see hundreds of posts per day. But even on those forums I'd imagine that approving posts from new accounts is still a bit of a headache anyway.

[lessfunnybunny]

The idea is interesting tho -> yes.

I will check out the forums one day. For now good luck.

[alaust]

Its a good function