What are your standards?

[tomgerner]

Recently a good friend of mine was told that she didn't meet Mandolin Cafe's standards and was not allowed to register. If that's the case then I shouldn't have been accepted either. What standards of acceptance are in place? To those in charge - please either respond in some thoughtful way or accept my resignation.

[journeybear]

This is a very accepting place, welcoming a wide diversity of people, the only basic standard being civility. First thing is, contact the admins privately about something like this rather than air grievances in the open forum. No wait - first thing is, read the Forum Guidelines/FAQ, which should give you all the info you need. But there's no such thing as resignation. You just stop reading and posting.

[Scott Tichenor]

I'd need to know what the actual meaning of was not allowed to register entailed. The registration process involves several steps every membership request must pass.

If someone is truly not allowed to register that means their email address or registration IP address was reported to an anti-spam database and the membership request was blocked. The vast majority of time this is valid, but it can be in error. Most large forums utilize some type of service to fight spam. We receive over a thousand spam-based membership requests daily. Most are computer generated by bots and are easily deterred. The most troublesome are created by people wishing to leverage SEO and post spam. If this is the case and someone is blocked, the following message is provided instructing them to contact the site owner (me). When I hear from people I manually register them (one a month is average):

Registration denied. This forum runs an active policy of not allowing spammers. Please contact us via the "Contact Us" page link if you believe this is in error

It doesn't guarantee this individual spammed, but it does mean that they are accessing through an IP that has been reported or someone spoofed their email and was reported incorrectly as spamming.

We often have people tell us they're denied because they can't pass the CAPTCHA test, the visual image containing alpha or numeric characters. In those cases we assist them in the registration process.

Rarely, we reject inappropriate user names requested, covered in our Forum guidelines. I can only recall one in the past 30 days.

- We do not accept user names created with the intent to draw attention to matters of politics, sex and religion, nor those deemed inappropriate by the site owners.

We will reject multiple membership requests made from the same IP address with what appears to be an attempt to post under different names, also a policy covered in our posting guidelines.

There are a variety of other errors that can occur but this covers the bulk. Member requests come to us anonymously, evaluated by an external service that can possibly block them at which point you're instructed to contact the site. Otherwise, user error or difficulty during registration is the more common. There is no hidden evaluation process for membership. We have neither the desire, time, nor inclination to involve ourselves in such matters. If your friend requires assistance registering they are welcome to contact me.

[Denny Gies]

Great reply. Scott. This remains such a great site.