Membership Process

[johnco]

Having just found this website and being a Telstar 26 MK1 owner I decided to join yesterday and I paid the $10 donation fee via Paypal. How long does joining take and when can I expect to be able to access the member's area please anyone?

[Pat Ross]

Hi Johnco,

Two members have access to the donation and approval process. It may take a few days. But you should get a notice from Dan, he is the current Commodore.

He may be on a trip sailing. I gather you do not have access to the Members Only material yet, is this correct?

Pat

[Ron]

Johnco -

It's Wednesday night at about 10:30 PM. I haven't gotten any emails yet from paypal about your dues. I'll check paypal tomorrow.

[commodore]

There are two people with the required access, but only ONE person is doing this job. I try to check out the new registrations maybe every 2nd or 3rd day, same for Paypal deposits for membership dues. If I'm not around it will not get done in this time frame.

The probem is further compounded by the fact that 98 percent of the new registrations is for spammers trying to break in. For every 50 new user names, maybe one or two are valid registration attempts. I don't have the time to thoroughly check out every one, so I just zap any user name or email id that looks fake. It's pretty obvious most of the time (who would pick a user name of "zbxlpyxxy4"), and the same bad user names will sometimes show up every couple of days. Anything that looks valid gets a google check and sometimes a search to find out where it originated from. They can show up on several "spam lists" and get knocked out as well. Most of the spammers are in a half dozen countries in asia or ex soviet block countries.

This software has a safety feature where the new registrant must copy a graphic representation of characters and numbers to a text box, but it has never worked. Robotic software doing this breaking in normally cannot do this and should not wind up on the registration list. I do not have access to fix it either. It would help if it could weed these spammers out. Dan - can this be fixed?

Commodore (aka Ron).

[Ron]

Could someone take over the registration process for 2 weeks or so until my shoulder heals a drop. Had surgery last week and it's getting very difficult for me to track anything down. Since Dan already knows how to do this, it would be a lot easier if he takes it over, and any other volunteer would need his help anyway (passwords, etc.). And it would probably be harder for me to show someone how to do it than to do it by myself.

Also - could new registrants give us a few days to do it? I'm getting emails and phone calls maybe 5 minutes after they sign up on paypal asking why they don't have access yet. I normally check for new users maybe ever 3 days or so. I obviously have not done this in about a week now. It would also be very helpfull if they posted something with their forum username - it can be difficult to figure out who is who without it.