There are a couple of administrative items that I thought I would cover in a separate thread. They concern new member registration and posting challenges.
In case you didn't notice we cut off new member registrations a month or so ago, for the second time. The reason was to stop spam registrations. At Batters Box we have a two step registration process, you fill out a few details and then we can approve you or not. We have always been actively deleting spam registrations so our membership list doesn't get bloated. Over the past few years we would get between 50 and 70 spam applications per day. We would know they are spam usually by the registration name, either it was an incomprehensible mix of letters, numbers and symbols or it fitted a pattern where there is a name followed by say two numbers and we would have ten requests by jim10, jim 12, and so on. This was a pain in the butt but we could manage.
Then about four months ago the volume of spam requests ballooned to hundreds per day. It was difficult to find the time to delete them, it was a task that had to be done one by one. So we shut off membership for a while to see if the "internet lords" would shut down some of these spammers. We had always found an ebb and flow in spam requests, some new program would come out the numbers would jump and then a while later they would drop again, but the numbers were manageable. When we turned registration back on the spammers came back just as heavily as before. Over one weekend we did not delete any applicants and that left around 700 in the queue and that slowed down the site and effectively stopped people being able to post. So we shut down membership applications again. That is where we are at now but I need to address those who would like to become members.
If you want to become a member send an email to roster at the batters box url. We can arrange to open the registration for a defined window to let new members register and then shut it down again. Thanks for your patience.
The other issue that has come up from time to time is the ability to post comments. We have heard, and it has happened to me, that sometimes you cannot post from a particular configuration. We admit that our geeklog host is old, but we are trying to live with it for now. So it would be useful to know what problems you are having and what configuration causes it.
For example if I use IE10 and Windows 7 I cannot post. I get a blank posting window after I hit preview and my comment is gone unless I go back, but I just cannot post it.
I have not had the same problem with using Chrome. I have had occasionally a different problem when I copy and paste something into Chrome, for some reason, and from time to time, geeklog doesn't like that and again I get an empty box.
So if you have had problem please identify them here so we can triangulate to see if we can identify a common issue.
I see the problem with saying post here to tell us why you cannot post. If you do not have a workaround send an email to the roster address above.
Thanks everyone.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20140428145009779