Make forum membership easier?

[Litppunk]

I have been trying to get Cataclysm downloaded for a while, unsuccessfully. But in order to get help in the forums, i had to answer security questions that could only be learned by playing the game…that I didn’t yet have playable. I eventually got through with the help of the wiki and multiple tries, and some luck, however, this could potentially chase away others having trouble getting their first game started. Perhaps you mean to keep noobs (like me), and spammers from clustering forums, and so you use it as something of a filter. If this is not the case then maybe make it so people who want to play, but do not have enough coding experience to so, can still answer the questions.

thread regarding my problem:
Mac compile tools…what are they?

yep… Im currently using a mac. Can’t wait to read the well deserved hate mail from you guys.

[EkarusRyndren]

…You can’t even read the forums without an account? I didn’t know this… What are we a warez board?

[TheFlame52]

…You can’t even read the forums without an account? I didn’t know this… What are we a warez board?

I seem to remember that you could, I lurked here a while without one…

[EkarusRyndren]

[quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:2, topic:8584”]…You can’t even read the forums without an account? I didn’t know this… What are we a warez board?

I seem to remember that you could, I lurked here a while without one…[/quote]

I remember that too, but then again I’m pretty sure we’re both pre-rise of the Spam.

[Chaz]

Oh wow, those questions are actually pretty tough - Granted, the question regarding 0.B would be answered easily by looking at the game’s front page, but the other one you could only know by playing the game enough - and if you can’t even get the game running and need help from the forums, that’s kind of unfair.

[Litppunk]

you can read the forums all you want, problem is you can’t write anything without making an account, and you can’t make an account without knowing the game well enough to have already played. I am only here now because I read lots of spoilers while trying to make compile work, otherwise I might have rage quit before bothering to make an account. Also there are more than 2 answers and it rotates randomly through them untill you get them right…although I suspect maybe you get locked out after so many wrong answers maybe? not sure just seems like something that might have been overlooked.

[i2amroy]

If it seems that we have a tough system it’s probably because it was put in place when we had someone

LazyCat (Not LazyCat-rus he’s cool)

with a personal vendetta against Cataclysm: DDA who literally spent hours every day sneaking spam and rage posts into the forum. He’s been gone for a while now, but part of the difficulty in joining the forum certainly dates to that point in time.

[KA101]

[quote=“i2amroy, post:7, topic:8584”]If it seems that we have a tough system it’s probably because it was put in place when we had someone
(Damnatio memoriae means I don’t repeat the name-KA101)
with a personal vendetta against Cataclysm: DDA who literally spent hours every day sneaking spam and rage posts into the forum. He’s been gone for a while now, but part of the difficulty in joining the forum certainly dates to that point in time.[/quote]

I beefed up the security considerably after the recent spammer flood, and tweaked things a bit after encountering someone posting something completely out of place in the Announcements threads.

We still get enough folks legitimately joining that I’m convinced it’s human-passable within half an hour of looking around the forum and wiki, if you’ve not played the game. Forcing folks to see what the community is like before joining it seems acceptable to me; if you need install support and can’t be bothered to pass forum-join authentication, the IRC doesn’t ask questions to join, and you may even get real-time help.

[kevin.granade]

I would love for forum signup to be easier for real people persons.
Unfortunately what we’re doing is from what I can tell the best practice for smf forums with heavy spammer activity.

In other words, we have to make it hard enough that it’s not worth the spammers’ time to sort out the questions.
All the captchas available to us are currently broken from what I’ve read, and community-specific security questions are all that is left.

[Litppunk]

proper balance is always a hard thing to reach especially since you never know if you’ve reached it. I was of the opinion that it was a little to much on the side of forcing people to read spoilers, but again whatever if they can’t spend 20 mins checking forums for answers probably would have had to read spoilers anyways to get through the game. Plus not likely to be even half-decent contributors to forums. Glad to see its been considered though ^.^