Forum registration and nicknames

[Theo Gottwald]

You know that the forum rules say that everyone must register with the full and real name. This was some lesson, we learned from the PB-Forum. Its the best way to keep posters serious, and spammers outside.

Some time ago, Jose told me that still a lot of people register with nicknames. I don't like that, because it uses Jose's time.
My standpoint is that I prefer him to use his time to built all the COM-Support, Example-Code, Headers, Include Files etc. so much needed from the Forum community.

Thats why I suggested to just reject any such registration. But Jose still went on to write every single person a mail "Please register with your full name".
Thats him.

Because I knew this uses his valuable time, I changed the registration form and wrote in the biggest letters:
"Attention! Please register with your full and real name". And also added some example, so everyone should be able to understand this.

See here: REGISTRATION-FORM
(You may have to logout to read it).

I told Jose "Noone can ever register using a nickname from today. I used the biggest letters. Anyone using a nickname from now must be blind or a spammer."

In fact I was too optimistic. Still people manage to oversee the biggest letters and register with nicknames.
Right now we have a "Skyking"l, and yesterday we had "gigapower" awaiting for approval.


What happen, if a user registers with a nickname?

First we look at the nickname he registered with.
If its "OnlineMeds" or "BuyViagra" etc. we just reject it, because we assume that noone in here needs "men-oriented medication" (because only Real Men use PB!).
Second we verify his mailadress and IP-Adress to see if he's a spammer.
Third: If he seems to be one of those users which have overseen the forum rules, we write him a mail.

These mails could look like this, if I write them:

Thank your for registering with Jose's Forum.

To have your account approved, you need to register with your complete and full name.
Nicknames like "Skyking" are not allowed.

If Jose writes them, they can be much shorter :-).

We then most often get an answer like this (mail is just an example but from a real case):

Ok my name is ******* age **,
I am learning Power Basic, nickname ner said you needed my whole name etc.
If it would have said so I would have entered it that way

Ok, then we change the account and approve the user.

But this can take time.
Using nicknames, some accounts even stay for a week or longer and wait for approval.

Therefore please register with your full and real name, then your registration is most often beeing handled within few minutes!

[Donald Darden]

I agree, Theo.  Legitimate posters and serious developers should be willing to use their rightful names and stand behind their words and their work.  Further, the use of real names helps keep spammers off this web site because. as I've seen, when spammers try to register, they often used some derived username that would not pass for a legitimate name.  It really helps if peiple start out being honest about who they are, and make no pretense of hiding behind a bogus name.

[Patrice Terrier]

In a world of real programmers, only REAL name should be used. 

I also do not like people using "TU" with me, instead of "VOUS", when it is the first time they get in touch with me.

Patrice Terrier
www.zapsolution.com

[Frederick J. Harris]

Absolutely.  People should use their real names.

[Jim Robinson]

I don't believe there is anything wrong with using nicknames or aliases. It is a strong internet tradition that is not going to go away soon.

However, I do find myself wishing that people would just use their real names instead. It just seems more personal and sincere no matter what the topic.

[Theo Gottwald]

I don't believe there is anything wrong with using nicknames or aliases.

I also don't think there is something wrong using aliases. For example if you are a gamer and you like to play games.
or in a single chat, and you don't want you husband (or women?) get you there.
Or even in political discussions, when you're afraid to say your opinion openly.

Anyway if it comes to serious bussiness, like you get member in a club or something, you'll need to give your real name,
to show your seriosity. Thats not a counterstrike community and your name should not be "Thunderbolt" in here.

About me I can say that I use my full and real name in any case, or at least a link to my web-site,
but this will of course lead to that google can find out a lot of a person, and therefore will make you
to be able to stand to your positions. With your name and your word.

[E.K.Virtanen]

This goes "bumb" section a bit but...

I think its good manner to use real name, or something near of it, like my way E.K.Virtanen where E.K comes from first and second name.
For gamers, naturally its not so fun since game nicks would be nice to have but thats why we have signatures to use.

[Theo Gottwald]

What is a "bump section"?

Do we need one maybe :-)?

[E.K.Virtanen]

Hi.

With *bumb* i ment that i am waking up old topic

E.K.Virtanen

[José Roca]

 
About 99% of new registrations end being deleted. The most frequent case are users that register using nicknames or incomplete names. To these, I send an email asking for their real, full name, but very few reply. There are others that are approved, but don't activate his account. Most of these register using yahoo, hotmail or gmail addresses, and apparently don't bother to read the emails that they receive in these accounts. Finally, there are the ones that use temporary email addresses provided by sites like temporaryinbox. A couple of hours ago someone has registered using "Test" as user name and "gtrmq8dzs54bh3v@bodhi.lawlita.com" as the email address.

This is a serious forum, not a site build to collect addresses to send spam. If you don't trust us, then please don't register, but don't waste our time.

[Donald Darden]

I read what a number of people say on the subject of giving out personal data, or using real or bogus email accounts.  Even some of the writers in the various PC magazines encourage the idea of keeping a safe distance from the Internet by employing some deception.

Fact is, we can't really tell if a person is using his or her real name or not, as it could be any name that passes reasonable inspection.  Because we do require a valid email address as part of the validation process, you can't fake that and get on, but it could be a temporary account with any number of email services.  It may seem unnecessary to ask for an email address, but in fact it is a great way to eliminate a lot of spammers, especially those that are using automatic software processes to try and scam their way onto various web sites.

The idea is to make sure that you are serious about joining the forums.  Anybody can just read through without posting, and for that you do not need to join, but joining is the thing you do when you want to be a member of a community, and posting is what you do when you have something to say.

[José Roca]

 
I'm doing my best to protect the members of this forum from spamers. The members list isn't available to guests and you can hide your email address.

New members that are already know to me because they are also members of the PowerBASIC forum, have they account approved very quickly. For the others, I do searches in the web trying to confirm the submitted data and, even when their account is approved, they have to activate it following a link that is sent to them by email.

[MikeTrader]

I also don't think there is something wrong using aliases.

I agree. There are many reasons to use a Nick. In my business, a simple Google search of my name or product name could give a competitor an unwanted insight into my years of development work. This is a very real problem in narrow market verticals.

With spam and moron mail at the level it is currently at, I think it is very reasonable for a site admin to ask for some personal information. I use several techniques to verify a persons authenticity. A credit card is of course #1, but my favorite is a phone call. With Skype, it is possible to reach out to the world. but usually just asking for a daytime phone number is enough to ward of the time wasters.

Even if you only charge one Euro, the credit card means that the person is real. It is a little work to set up a payment method, but Paypal is a very easy method and accepts payments in any currency from many instruments. In my opinion this would weed out the time wasters instantly. Who would not pay a Euro for registering at a site of this quality?

[E.K.Virtanen]

I also don't think there is something wrong using aliases.

I agree too. For me it is not a issue but there is peoples who dont want theyr real names spreaded with search engines. Thats why i think its ok if some edited nicks should be allowed.

Who would not pay a Euro for registering at a site of this quality?

Well, depends where you live, paypal is not so functional. Example in my country, paypal is not supported much since it is not Verified by Visa. That means i cant use it.
Also asking peoples to use their credit cards because of forum feels bit weird. Maybe in somewhere credit card details are shared like morning news magazines but not everywhere. World is more than just your country

My 2 cents.
Every one who registers, are emailed with question with what you can find out is it a bot or person. If its a person, confirm account (by admin).
When account is created, person must know that if he stays as zero poster, hes account will be removed or if he wont login for long period, hes account will be freezed (in case of long journey or something, it should not be removed atleast in few months).

[Theo Gottwald]

Actually we enforce that people must post with their names.
And now compare the quality posts in this forum with those posts in other forums.

We have a much better atmosphere between people in here.
While everybody knows that we would not accept it otherwise.