Changes to registration procedure.

This won't directly affect anyone who is already a member here, but a number of significant changes have occured that might see some changes to who interacts here.

One thing I wanted to do during the Movie season was to open up this board to allow people who aren't fans yet, to join up and start talking about the movie they just saw, and maybe they might stick around. But for the last year or so I had to instigate a manual registration procedure because of spammers, and Banned Member Sean* harassing members and staff, and vandalising this board, despite agreeing to the conditions of access everytime he registered (these are cleaned up off the board so as not to spoil the fun of others here, but I archive everything to prove it later if ever required).

Since the anti-spam measure I implimented has kept out about 99% of the spammers, and Sean* still sneaks in illegally anyway, I have changed the registration procedure to make it automatic, and see how it works out.

So until further notice, we could very well see newbies come and go, but they will be labelled as 'Protoform'. Those that stick around will have the option of upgrading their status to 'Member' at any time at their choosing.
Those that don't upgrade, will be deleted once they have lost interest here (a month of inactivity). Also, the Protoform usergroup will not have PM access (to prevent further abuse of it by Sean*), so if they find they need PM access, they will need to upgrade their status.
The full userguide of rules still apply to everyone, no matter their status, but as with any newbie, cut 'em a little slack if they inadvertantly get something wrong.

Those who are already in the Protoform usergroup, will be sent a message and given the option to remain as a Protoform (with the new limitations), or be upgraded to 'Member'.

I'm hoping that this works so that it completely automates the whole registration process. Otherwise, I'm spending time processing each registration, and the applicant has to wait for me to get around to it, which can take a few hours or even a few days.

PLUS, we have a new usergroup (which some may have seen already mentioned around the place in the last few days).
It is called 'Distant Spark', and is for any foreigners who are beyond our part of the world who are not elligible to become a 'Member' or 'Deluxe Member' unless they move here. They have most of the same limited access and features that Protoforms have (like deletion after a month of inactivity), and since only about 1% of our registration applicants are from beyond our region of the world, I thought I'd see what affect this has (and it will make us look less xenophobic to the rest of the world). After all, we might get complaints from foreigners about them not being welcome here, but that doesn't mean they actually want to join here. This way we don't have any negative publicity over the issue, and we shouldn't see much change to the makeup of our community of users. And when they do register, they aren't likely to interact much anyway because of our Australian focus of issues, and our vastly different timezone (to the main hub of western fans in Nth America & England).

* Sean is the name required to adequately (and legally) refer to a specific Banned Member who has registered here at least 39 times under many usernames - Saber Prime, wolfgang, the_doctor, Doublecross, Stalker, stamus_prime, obama_prime, max_explosion, shardy, Plastic Addict, egon_is_a_scrub, sarah, pissed off, the_fallen, swindel, Dino_King_Grimlock, Autobase_Australia, counter_punch, 1wheelie1, Autobase_Australia01, Autobase_Australia02, Darkwind, Autobase_Australia03, Autobase_Australia_forum, Autobase_Australia_forum1, SB101, strop (and probably some others that are still currently registered).

As usual, if you have any comments or questions about these recent changes, please contact me. I don't mind the feedback, I just don't want to see members criticising other member's opinions/suggestions in an open topic.

I just need to clarify that the 'Distant Spark' usergroup doesn't mean I will be promoting our forum as being open to long-distance foreigners - it just means that if for some reason we get someone wanting to join here, I wouldn't block them. They'd join, and if we don't hear from them within a month (like every other previous long-distance member), they'd be purged. We've never been inundated by long-distance applicants, so there's no need for negative publicity over an issue that doesn't appear to have much of an impact here.