Whateveresque Registration Day, 3/15/08
Posted on March 15, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
Today is one of the two days a month I open up the Whateveresque forum to registrations, so if you’ve always wanted to comment on Whateveresque but just never got around to registering, now would be good. I’m going to keep registrations open through about midnight eastern time.
Incidentally, here’s how to make it easy for me to see that you’re not an automated spam monster:
1. Pick a screen name that is recognizably not an automated spam-generated thing (i.e., use real words in a sensible way without random numbers);
2. Don’t use hotmail as your e-mail address;
3. If you pick a personal name (or something that looks like one), don’t have it drastically at variance with your personal name-styled e-mail.
Doing any of these (particularly the first) will drastically increase the chances of me deciding you’re a spam-generated account and dumping your registration into the delete queue. Sorry about that.
Also, there may be a delay between when you register and when I confirm your registration. Because I have a life outside of the computer, you see.
Anyway, register away!
So, would you say you’re happier with WordPress than with Movable Type? Is the effort of switching (assuming one has to do it oneself) worth the reward of functionality?
Er, weird. Meant to put that in the other thread. Brain still not working. Please disregard and continue about your business.
Is hotmail really more of a hotbed of spammers and bots than other webmail hosts? I often can’t register at sites with hotmail for an opposite reason: The registration messages from a lot of blog and bb sites get completely eaten by MSN’s spam filter.
I guess I’m lucky I registered here early. My hotmail account is almost eight years old, and as crusty as hotmail is, more people know that one than anywhere else; it’s just not worth redirecting everything to gmail.
It’s *like* you’re speaking English, but I can’t make out a thing you’re saying.
Yeah I had to use an alternate email also, since my hotmail is apparently evil.
I’m not sure how old my account is, I’ve had it for years, but it was made before six character names were required. It works as a kind of spam filter on it’s own, seems like most modern spambots won’t bother with four character names.
Hi, John. Not a registration comment, but I wanted to let you know I mentioned you in my latest column at The Fix On Line. I enjoyed your You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop, and I worked it into the article.
at http://thefix-online.com/features/get-out-of-the-house/
I guess I checked scalzi.com earlier than I should have. I missed registration. Do you have scheduled days that you normally allow registration?
On a different subject I finished OMW last night. I really enjoyed it. Definitely going to pick up some more of your books for my To Be Read shelf. Good work.
Jesse:
Registrations days will (usually) be on the 1st and 15th of each month.
Glad you liked OMW!
You might just consider adding a Captcha to your registration to avoid the bots.. I often use “reCaptcha” for my clients since its free and a cool concept. Basically two words, one “known” and the other from a book scan that the guys at CMU are trying to archive into digital textual format. The use types both words and they use these as votes towards what the ocr word “should” have been. This keeps the bots at bay since they can’t easily guess the words and helps the archive get more books into its library!
Check it out at http://recaptcha.net
If it’s a bit too technical ask a geek friend to help or drop me a line and I am sure I can help ya work through it. :-)
@mythago: he’s referring to the place where they generate the pictures for the backgrounds.