A Note to Registrants

[Martin the Warrior]

Please note that The Long Patrol Forum requires that I, personally, validate every new account. This can only be done after you have registered and followed the instructions in the e-mail that is sent to you (typically, that only involves following a link). If you never received an e-mail, it either got caught by your spam filter or you misspelled your e-mail address. If you contact me, I can correct the e-mail address and resend the instructions, or you can register under a new name and start from the beginning. It's your choice.

I try to go through and validate new accounts every two weeks or so. This is an incredibly tedious process. Over 95% of all new registrants are spam bots with gobbledygook for usernames. Out of a batch of 400 registrants, maybe four of five will represent an actual person.

There is a distinct possibility that your account may inadvertently be lumped in with the spam bots, so here are a few things you can do to help the process along:

• Pick a Redwall name. You have no idea how something as simple as a "Grath" or a "Dinny" looks in a sea of all those names. They typically get approved with no problems.
  
  
• If you have an odd name, e-mail me at webmaster@longpatrolclub.com with your information. This tells me there is someone on the other end and they're anxious to start posting. I'll do my best to get you approved ASAP.
  
  
• Be patient. As I've said, I validate about once every two weeks. Occasionally I'll do it sooner. (I just did a batch not even twelve hours after the last validation cycle and already had 40 registrants-- of whom only one got in.) Getting angry and demanding to be let in does not speed up the process. However, e-mailing me to let me know you're not a spambot is appreciated.

Once you've been let in, changing your e-mail address will also require I revalidate your account. If you do this, please e-mail me as soon as possible and I'll take care of it.

That should be all. Thanks for stopping by The Long Patrol Forum!

[Martin the Warrior]

Status Update for Registrants--

Quite a few bots have gummed up the validation process, resulting in several timed out errors and leaving prospective registrations prospective. This unfortunately requires a more time-intensive workaround.

New accounts will be turned on manually over the next few days. Unfortunately, a byproduct of this is that you will not receive a confirmation e-mail. Your account will simply become "live". Once I'm done, I'll be able to purge all the bot-generated accounts and standard procedures will resume.

In the meantime, new registrations have been disabled.

I'll let you know when everything is complete.

[Martin the Warrior]

It ultimately took me much, much longer than expected-- a lot of bots were gumming up the vB system so there wasn't anything to do but take care of them manually. Final count has the bot-accounts numbering around 10,600. Not a typo. I wish the human being count were similarly high, but we barely cracked double digits as far as I could determine.

The system has been restored to working order, though, and everyone who was waiting for validation should now have an active account.

New registrations have been allowed once again.

If you are human and had an account that suddenly vanished, please register again and e-mail me at the above address and you'll be taken care of post-haste.