Complaint About Registration

[Kathy Albrecht]

---Original Message-----
From: Kathy Albrecht
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 11:40 PM
To: WebMaster at Steppin Out New Mexico
Subject: Re: Welcome, New User at Steppin Out Forums!

Hi, Greg!

I gotta tell you, the "registration" process for using the Steppin' Out site was impossibly ponderous and ultimately disfunctional. In fact, I was told, after two days of attempts, that I was NOT blessed to be a user. Suggest you open it up/fire the gargoyles. I shudder to recall the experience and will not try again.

In other news, rest assured our friendship is unscathed!

Kathy

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__________________________________________________ _________

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking.

-- Buddhist proverb

[webmaster]

There’s no reason for you to register again, Kathy. Your registration was received, reviewed and approved on 10/22/07 at 2:04 a.m. I even sent you the following email (the words in blue below) at that time. Did you not receive this note?

In reply to your feedback about our registration process, I’ve written a separate longer message explaining why we can’t remove our registration requirement. Please read that note. It will help you see why (and when) registration is required on our site. The truth is most of our visitors don’t need to register. You may not have needed to either.

Warmest Personal Regards,
Greg

<------------- SNIP ---------->

Your new membership has been reviewed and approved. Welcome! It's a pleasure to have you as our newest member, Kathy! We hope you thoroughly enjoy our site!

Warmest Personal Regards,
Greg


<------------- SNIP ---------->

[webmaster]

Dear Kathy

This message is long. Please take a few minutes to read the whole thing. In it I’ve taken the time to explain in layman’s terms why we require visitors who wish to post on our site to register. After you’ve read it, I think you’ll fully understand the dilemma we face.

First, it’s important to realize our average visitor registration is NOT required to register. Everyone who visits our site can SEE practically everything posted here without being a member. It is only those who want (or need) to POST on our site who must be registered members. If we removed the register-to-post requirement our site would be flooded with thousands of spam posts faster than we could say "Oh sh*t!"

I'm sorry, but much as I would like to "open it up", as you suggest, we can not do so. No way, no how. Let me explain why. . .

Our registration requirement was implemented to allow us to detect and block posting attempts by spammers. It is only by requiring registration that we get the chance to pre-screen everyone who wants to post on our site and thus separate the would-be spammers from real people. That lets us keep thousands of spammers who would otherwise flood the site with hundreds of (porn, medical, gambling, cheap software, mortgage offers, scams, phony ads, etc.) spam posts every day 365 days a year from being able to post on our site at all. If we ‘opened it up’, it would be a full time job for someone to try to remove all the spam posts we’d receive and we'd never be 100% successful at finding and removing them all!

Here’s a simple example. I thought I had every part of the site nailed down so tight no one but registered and approved users could ever post anywhere. I was wrong. I discovered yesterday that I’d left one small area in an obscure part of the site unprotected so that unregistered users actually COULD post there. Oops! Despite the remoteness and obscurity of that security “leak” we were still getting lots of spam posts there. Fortunately, those posts weren't actually appearing on the site because I did require that all posts made there had to be reviewed and approved before they could appear. I noticed the “leak” because I finally remembered to go there to see if any posts had been made in that area. When I did, I discovered a HUGE mountain of over 1,000 spam posts (and not a single valid post) waiting there for my “approval”. Those 1,000 spam posts had accumulated in that obscure area in just a few months. God knows how many spam posts we’d receive throughout the site if we "opened it up" as you suggest; but I'm certain it would be 35,000 – 50,000 posts a year and perhaps more.

So, unless you know someone who’s willing to volunteer to spend 8 – 10 hours a day 7 days a week forever to help us remove all spam posts from our site, the registration requirement must stay, Kathy.

Frankly, Gwen and I hate the registration requirement as much as you do. We discussed it for weeks before it was put in place. But as popular as our site is, and as many visitors as it receives and as highly-visible as our content is in Google, the site attracts thousands of spammers faster than fresh horse manure draws flies

Why?

Here’s part of an email I sent an event sponsor about one article we posted on our site last Friday. It shows how many ways her article could be found in Google the next morning as a direct result of that article. If you’re interested, you can read the article in our Top News Stories section on our front page or click here: Deming NM – Famous Painting Bird Helps Raise Funds to Neuter Cats & Dogs (http://sonewmex.com/modules.php?name=News&file=showarticle&threadid=2440).

< ---------------------- Snip ------------------ >

The Google spider crawled our site last night. When I checked this morning, I found your Steppin’ Out article now turns up in Google on either the first or second page of search results under ALL of the following 42 searches! Most of them are ‘right on the money’. But some are pretty funny. There may well be dozens of other searches where this article also appears. These are just the ones I could find with about 30 minutes of searching. The ones in “red” at the end are those I found particularly funny. They are also marked with a :)

deming animal guardians
deming gold street gallery
deming cats and dogs
deming painting bird
deming neuter
deming neuter cats
deming spay cats
deming neuter dogs
deming spay dogs
deming cats dogs – Page 2
deming spay neuter
luna county spay neuter
deming they hunt birds don't they
deming bird painter
deming avian painter
deming pat danser
deming joan mallery
deming painting cockatiel
deming bird art
deming bird hunters
luna county bird hunters
new mexico joan mallery
nm joan mallery
nm pat danser
new mexico spay neuter pat danser
new mexico spay neuter joan mallery
new mexico painting bird
new mexico famous avian artist
nm painting bird
famous painting bird
lili bird painter
lili avian artist
lili painting bird
deming bush and cheney :)
deming spay neuter bush :)
deming spay neuter cheney :)
luna county spay neuter bush :)
luna county neuter cheney :)
new mexico spay neuter bush cheney :)
nm spay neuter bush cheney :)
nm spay neuter bird hunters :)
new mexico spay neuter bird hunters :)

Other than that, you seem to have been ignored.

< ---------------------- Snip ------------------ >

Kathy, this email is just one example of the number of new entries that are added to the Google search engine for just about every new article posted on our site. If you multiply 42 by 12,000 (the approximate number of articles and events we’ve posted on our site to date), that means our site has generated nearly 500,000 new page 1 or page 2 Google search engine entries to date. NOW do you see why the spammers of the web are so EAGER to post on our site?

Under the circumstances, Kathy, what else would you suggest we do?

Best Professional Regards,
Greg Platt
WebMaster / Online Publisher / “Whipping Boy”
Steppin Out New Mexico