Registering at StripersAndAnglers.com...WHY is it so difficult??

[DarkSkies]

My names John and registering for this site was the hardest thing I have done all month. The spam bots must hate your forum.

Hey John nice to see ya stop by and say hello!

1. Spam bots and registration - a few years ago we were getting hammered by spam registration.....I didn't want to claim site growth that way, because to me spammers are internet slime, just taking up bandwidth.....selling useless crap and taking advantage of trusting folk with various scams.....
I was spending up to an hour or more each day getting rid of the spammers....
So Pebbles and I came up with one simple question, to ensure that all who register here are real people, who have an interest in fishing....

Don't feel bad if you found it difficult. A friend who is a teacher had to call me twice before he could figure it out.....I think it's ok to bust on him if I keep it anonymous...










I'm pretty aggressive now even with the spammers who manage to get in, and are from certain countries....they are banned immediately....with a notification that if they are fishermen to contact me via e-mail and I will reinstate them....so far, none of the ones from exotic countries I banned, have asked to be re-instated....
I feel I have developed a 6th sense of who spammers are, and I try the best I can to keep them away from our members here.....

**Although I realize it isn't my responsibility, I try to be vigilant....I still want our members to be careful, though
One joined the other week and tried to ask Lenny about a reel he had for sale in the past. I'm convinced he was a spammer as his IP came from one of the countries notorious for Nigerian type scams.....

The reason for this long dissertation is I thought it merited a discussion, and I wanted to warn other members here that although Pebbles and I try our best to be diligent, some spammers will undoubtedly get through....

I hope this serves as a warning to our unsuspecting members who never had to deal with this type of scum before....
1. Don't engage in transactions with someone you don't know.......who
2. is not in the US,
3. or if out of the country,
4. cannot be verified favorably via a Global internet source like E-bay, etc....

[DarkSkies]

Based on JBarbosa's comments I started this thread....thought some of ya's might like to understand the thought process that went behind some of the decisions we make.

I have gotten some comments about the difficulty of registering before, so I hope this explains things a little better.....
If not feel free to ask questions in this thread or PM e-mail me at any time if you have any thoughts how to make it better.....thanks for reading......

[J Barbosa]

It wasn't all that bad, you got to know me a little working together at Jim's place so you know I have a strange sense of humor. I think it looks for a specific answer and anything not typed exact kicked the form back and caused it to reset for me (maybe because I'm on an iPad?).

i have also found some forums are not that iPad friendly.

[storminsteve]

I think dark's ultimate goal is to only have members on here who smell like him. An elite club of a handful. I probably wouldn't qualify, glad I got in before he made it so tough. just kidding, dark.