Fountain Pen Board - I've been waiting to be a member since January. Is it just me?

[Chrissy]

I applied to join FPB in January and received a validation email on January 22nd. I clicked the link on straight away, and it says I'm validated. However, although it let's me sign in, I can't do anything else.

I've just been on there and I can't post a thread, nor reply to a thread. Does anyone know what I'm waiting for and how long I have to wait for it?

Am I missing something that I haven't done? Does everybody have to wait for 3 months before they can post or reply to a thread or post?

I can't work it out. Does anyone know how it works and can anyone please advise me what I have to do to be able to post on there?

[Cob]

I applied to join FPB in January and received a validation email on January 22nd. I clicked the link on straight away, and it says I'm validated. However, although it let's me sign in, I can't do anything else.

I've just been on there and I can't post a thread, nor reply to a thread. Does anyone know what I'm waiting for and how long I have to wait for it?

Am I missing something that I haven't done? Does everybody have to wait for 3 months before they can post or reply to a thread or post?

I can't work it out. Does anyone know how it works and can anyone please advise me what I have to do to be able to post on there?

That happened to me. David Isaacson runs the site and he posts here; I suggest you send him a PM.

Rgds

Cob

[Jon Szanto]

I just assisted someone else on another forum join up there. David doesn't devote full-time and he is piled up with spambots. I'm not making excuses, but Chrissy, if you PM or email me the name you signed up with over there, I'll send him a note on FB and see if he can get to it.

My, how convoluted.

[Chrissy]

Thank you both.

Jon, message sent

[david i]

Chrissy, I confirmed your membership.

The short story is that besides the 90 hour work weeks at night two weeks per month for my hospital work, traveling at length and running a pen sales website during the two weeks per month off, the FPB site has been flooded by spambots since some nice people in China and Ukraine figured out how to have their spambots get past the initial security offered by Invision Power boardware. As a result, we get perhaps 10-50 fake memberships for every real one, in which case if I were to enable automatic clearance of applications, we'd have dozens of porn ads show up each day on the board. Sooo... 200 real members apply, 2000+ fake memberships appear. I set the boardware to require manual approval even after the double opt-in by members. Some spam accounts are obvious. Others... not. There are fora dedicated to outing spam applications to message boards, and many of the fake applications I have to hand check against those sites.

What was automatic posting privileges for new members a couple years ago, now is a backlog of a couple thousand applications I am not quite keeping up with examining

As Jon said, if anyone is trying to join FPB and is unable to post, send me a note at isaacson@frontiernet.net (yes 2 'nets'), and I'll clear you within a day.

regards

david

[Chrissy]

Chrissy, I confirmed your membership.

The short story is that besides the 90 hour work weeks at night two weeks per month for my hospital work, traveling at length and running a pen sales website during the two weeks per month off, the FPB site has been flooded by spambots since some nice people in China and Ukraine figured out how to have their spambots get past the initial security offered by Invision Power boardware. As a result, we get perhaps 10-50 fake memberships for every real one, in which case if I were to enable automatic clearance of applications, we'd have dozens of porn ads show up each day on the board. Sooo... 200 real members apply, 2000+ fake memberships appear. I set the boardware to require manual approval even after the double opt-in by members. Some spam accounts are obvious. Others... not. There are fora dedicated to outing spam applications to message boards, and many of the fake applications I have to hand check against those sites.

What was automatic posting privileges for new members a couple years ago, now is a backlog of a couple thousand applications I am not quite keeping up with examining

As Jon said, if anyone is trying to join FPB and is unable to post, send me a note at isaacson@frontiernet.net (yes 2 'nets'), and I'll clear you within a day.

regards

david

Thank you David (and Jon) I'm sorry but I never realised how spambots can flood fora like this. That's awful. If I had known who to contact, I would have tried that, and I will now know in future.

At least I'm in now. Thanks for that. That's lucky because currently my email isn't working, so I can't contact anyone.

[Jon Szanto]

And, if you are reading this, Chrissy, you can ignore the two emails I've sent today. Thanks again to David, the automated spamming is just evil.