Why is it so difficult to get an account here?

Time and time again I've heard stories of people trying to create Doomworld accounts only for them to be eternally stuck in limbo, sometimes with an established member having to vouch for them in order for them to gain entry. Is there any particular reason for that being the way it is?

I assume it's to fight the bots, which have overtaken a number of gaming forums (with late CPMA forum being an example, before it died completely).

I'm not sure why simple captcha check is not enough though - perhaps that's because doomworld.com is still a very popular forum and thus people would actually take time to fill captcha and set up fake accounts to advertise those purses or whatever?

When i registered during 2013 i never even had the slightest problem.
maybe my nickname was to obvious in its design as a human and not a bot. :-)

I know 3D Realms forums does the "account needs to be activated by an administrator" thing, when I first registered there I waited days and still wasn't activated, I gave up for a while then a month later I tried logging in only to find my account didn't exist anymore, it was most likely deleted by one of the admins. :/

I've been waiting for my ZDaemon forum account to be activated for years.

Avoozl said:

I know 3D Realms forums does the "account needs to be activated by an administrator" thing, when I first registered there I waited days and still wasn't activated, I gave up for a while then a month later I tried logging in only to find my account didn't exist anymore, it was most likely deleted by one of the admins. :/

It was the same for me. I manually contacted one of the admins and only then did my account get activated.

I understand that people have better stuff to do than to activate accounts all the time so I really think that automated system using CAPTCHA is enough.

Avoozl said:

I know 3D Realms forums does the "account needs to be activated by an administrator" thing, when I first registered there I waited days and still wasn't activated, I gave up for a while then a month later I tried logging in only to find my account didn't exist anymore, it was most likely deleted by one of the admins. :/

When there's a backlog with hundreds of accounts waiting activation, it's easy to delete one by mistake and not even notice it.

Gez said:

When there's a backlog with hundreds of accounts waiting activation, it's easy to delete one by mistake and not even notice it.

Unacceptable!

Technician said:

I've been waiting for my ZDaemon forum account to be activated for years.

Open registrations have been closed for almost 10 years lol. You should just message AF-Domains, Raider, or Kilgore, in #zdplayers by opening the ZDaemon Launcher frontend or using IDE. Anyone on the development team can finalize your account.

Don't use Outlook/Hotmail/Live, you'll never get the activation e-mail.

Bloodshedder said:

Don't use Outlook/Hotmail/Live, you'll never get the activation e-mail.

I think Outlook is the worst ever. Yet my place of employment has made it the standard e-mail we use. Based on my experience, it truly sucks. We don't even trust it when we send out more germane e-mails. Because, randomly, it seems to have an incredibly long lag of time to reach the recipient from when it was sent. We're talking hours.

From being an xbox user, I also hate live. the only reason why I even have one is because xbox forces you in order to have an account. Other than that, I've never accessed it for any other reason.

TheCupboard said:

Open registrations have been closed for almost 10 years lol. You should just message AF-Domains, Raider, or Kilgore, in #zdplayers by opening the ZDaemon Launcher frontend or using IDE. Anyone on the development team can finalize your account.

I've bugged the admin guy a few times on irc but I doubt he even pays attention anymore.

Bloodshedder said:

Don't use Outlook/Hotmail/Live, you'll never get the activation e-mail.

What do you mean? Do they block Doomworld emails? Or did you ban hotmail addresses?

Also, is Doomworld really invitation/recommendation based these days? I didn't see this coming.

I recall that some spamming lunatic(s) kept creating accounts and posting tasteless walls of text in random threads around 2011. I'm not sure if those series of (pathetic and easily revertible) attacks were part of the reason for tightening security on newly registered accounts, but it is nice that those attacks no longer occur as they were annoying to encounter when browsing.

That being said, if it really is so hard for legitimate users to get through, maybe registration could use further adjustment. I don't know the rate of new accounts being created, but if it's a time consuming backlog of some sort then perhaps established members could volunteer to sort out the actual Doomers from the bots.

printz said:

Also, is Doomworld really invitation/recommendation based these days? I didn't see this coming.

Whether intentional or not, that does seem to be the case in my experience. I tried getting two of my friends into Doom and had them sign up here, but it unfortunately turned out to be a waste of time as they just didn't bother beyond a few posts and I couldn't get them interested in the game beyond the occasional co-op session. Both times they were in limbo until I piped up about it.

Sodaholic said:

I don't know the rate of new accounts being created,

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/memberlist.php?what=datejoined (this list doesn't show accounts registered in past 3 days)

About 3 new accounts per day on average, as it seems.

scifista42 said:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/memberlist.php?what=datejoined (this list doesn't show accounts registered in past 3 days)

About 3 new accounts per day on average, as it seems.

Also, since I registered, I think there was at least one cleanup, apparently resulting in ~1000 accounts deleted:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1214597

I think I've had 3 accounts over 15 years. Never had a problem other than my own stupidity to remember my past 2 accounts.

Patrol1985 said:

I'm not sure why simple captcha check is not enough though

Bots are getting surprisingly good at solving Captcha checks, probably better than many humans.

Doomworld is a pretty exclusive place anyways. Only jaded Doom-bros are allowed.

Clonehunter said:

Only jaded Doom-bros are allowed.

Ah, you must be talking about 188DarkRevived. No wait, you're talking about Glassyman. Ah wait, I got it, you're talking about whoever was responsible for the Lucario disaster! Those guys are the most jaded Doom-bros I know about!

Linkrulezall said:

Ah, you must be talking about 188DarkRevived. No wait, you're talking about Glassyman. Ah wait, I got it, you're talking about whoever was responsible for the Lucario disaster! Those guys are the most jaded Doom-bros I know about!

The Lucario Disaster sounds like the weirdest Final Doom spin-off

I think there's a pretty good case to be made for easing the registration process for new users.

Linkrulezall said:

Ah, you must be talking about 188DarkRevived. No wait, you're talking about Glassyman. Ah wait, I got it, you're talking about whoever was responsible for the Lucario disaster! Those guys are the most jaded Doom-bros I know about!

I'm not sure I want to know what the Lucario disaster was... But I'm intrigued all the same. Like how ChrisChan disgusted me, so I looked up Deagle Nation and was similarly amused and horrified.

Linkrulezall said:

Time and time again I've heard stories of people trying to create Doomworld accounts only for them to be eternally stuck in limbo, sometimes with an established member having to vouch for them in order for them to gain entry. Is there any particular reason for that being the way it is?

Maybe because they're going to hell. Unless they're that one guy people all over the world know about. You know that one guy, the guy that raised from the grave and seems to leave everybody in limbo.

You just need a fake ID:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/everything-else/71698-passports-drivers-licenses-id-many-typesyahoo-com/
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/71699-passports-drivers-licenses-id-many-typesyahoo-com/