Membership Process

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Ron
Posts: 1136
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:15 pm
Location: SW Florida
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Membership Process

Post by Ron »

Sandy -

You do NOT have to join the associaton to register for the forum, but joining (and paying the probable one time $10 fee) is required to access the member only pages. I get about 25 new forum registrations every day, and about 1 percent of that is from people who actually want to register. The other 99 percent are from computers and people trying to break into the system. That means for every 100 attempts to register, only 1 is valid. I have no idea why they want to break into the forum, but I don't really want them there. I can spot most of them fairly easily based on the user id ("viagra", "cialis" and "porno" in the name, curse words, jibberish such as "xmeofjhrys7u", etc.) or the email address, the rest take some research (google, whois, etc.). We'd have over 5,000 members right now with 4800 of them spammers trying to do some damage to the forum. I can see it being turned into a porno site. We don't need that. For some reason, gmail seems to be a hotbed of spammers and thatr's why it was eliminated. I can put it back if necessary (and I think I actually did already).

The $10 dues was initiated because we were planning to do a LOT more with the web site and forum. Don't know why, but it never happened. Dan Kim would have to respond to that question, but he hasn't yet. We were going to buy software to transfer data from the old forum (run by PC), open a store on the web site, add a place on the web site to store documentation and pictures, etc. I would love to hire someone (or get a volunteer) to finish the web site, but Dan controls it and has not responded to this request. If he's too busy to do it, we can get someone else.

Since we don't need that much money now I decided to skip the renewal process until there is a reason for it. But ALL of the association members did pay the first $10 dues, so I figured it would be fair to charge any new member that now. If we ever do any of the above, we would consider occasionally asking for enough dues to stay solvent. We have about $1200 in the treasury now, with a significant portion of that a donation from PC as seed money to get us up. They wanted out of the forum business. By the way, they allowed everyone in and wound up with a bunch of porno hidden on their system.

Also - I am the only volunteer doing any of this work. If I can't do it (e.g - shoulder surgery 4 months ago, vacation, move to/from Florida twice a year, etc.), it does not get done. That's why we had problems registering people a few months ago.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Ron
Posts: 1136
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:15 pm
Location: SW Florida
Contact:

Membership Process

Post by Ron »

A reminder about new registrations for the forum. I just deleted around 200 new registration attempts, all of which seemed to be from spammers. I took a few short cuts because of the volume. Any new user id that did not look legitimate (and these names can get crazy) immediately went into the waste basket. Others got a google check on their email address and / or the physical location of their domain. There were no real people in the entire population. Anyone wishing to register should attempt to pick a legitimate user name or contact me first if they prefer to use something like "viagra for sale" or "xckkpaqtertuus".

I usually do the registrations about once or twice a week, so wait a couple of days if you don't hear back from the forum software.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Pat Ross
Posts: 185
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:15 am
Location: Panhandle Florida U. S. Gulf Coast
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Membership Process

Post by Pat Ross »

I am here to help any way I can,

all the best,

Pat
Ron
Posts: 1136
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:15 pm
Location: SW Florida
Contact:

Membership Process

Post by Ron »

Pat -

I've always been willing to accept help, but Dan has to give you the administrative access. I can't do it.

Dan - If you see this, could you give Pat the same access as me?
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Ron
Posts: 1136
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:15 pm
Location: SW Florida
Contact:

Membership Process

Post by Ron »

We're heading down to Florida tomorrow with some siteseeing along the way maybe. Boat was left in Florida and were not pulling a trailer, so I may take advantage of it. Note that I may not have computer access and/or the time to respond to new forum registrations or any posts, possibly for a week or so. Since I haven't seen the Telstar in about 6 months, it won't be much longer than that.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
luigisante
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2009 1:19 pm
Contact:

Membership Process

Post by luigisante »

Hopefully by the time you make your way back north next year, my telstar will be in the water. Enjoy your winter. I still have 7 or 8 years until retirement and then I can mimic your snowbird lifestyle.

Lou
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