People unable to register to POIScenter forums

[Nightingale]

Hi admin team,

It's been a tough battle with this forum, keeping it running well and spam free. I appreciate the effort, energy and money that is going into this.

I decided to make this topic after having a conversation with a man from Europe who found me on Skype, I'm guessing from my posts where I've displayed my Skype name for "gatherings" purposes. He had so many basic questions, I asked him why he wasn't asking them on the forum? Unfortunately for him, he has been unable to register for a long time.

I know there has been a lull in activity lately, and some wonder why there aren't more people like themselves posting. This guy would like to, but technical difficulties are keeping him from doing so.

So, I wanted to ask: is there anything we can do as a community to help change this? Improve the existing site? Raise money to build and maintain a better one? I think it CRUCIAL that this forum function properly, especially since it's what we are using to gather our info for the study at Rutgers.

Team, what do you think?

[demografx]

I think Daveman is...the Answer Man here!

?

[Daveman]

Hi admin team,

It's been a tough battle with this forum, keeping it running well and spam free. I appreciate the effort, energy and money that is going into this.

I decided to make this topic after having a conversation with a man from Europe who found me on Skype, I'm guessing from my posts where I've displayed my Skype name for "gatherings" purposes. He had so many basic questions, I asked him why he wasn't asking them on the forum? Unfortunately for him, he has been unable to register for a long time.

I know there has been a lull in activity lately, and some wonder why there aren't more people like themselves posting. This guy would like to, but technical difficulties are keeping him from doing so.

So, I wanted to ask: is there anything we can do as a community to help change this? Improve the existing site? Raise money to build and maintain a better one? I think it CRUCIAL that this forum function properly, especially since it's what we are using to gather our info for the study at Rutgers.

Team, what do you think?

Hi Nightingale,

Thanks for your concern, and it is a real one.

We recently did a version upgrade, which initially permited operation for about a month with practically zero spam, and it was much easier to manage, but "they" eventually caught on to the version upgrade, and since then the spam has been much worse than before.

It's like once the cockroaches get used to the poison, nothing can stop them.

There ARE ways, but it requires an almost full-time effort. That is, we would have to hire a service that would probably need to dedicate a couple of hours a day to keeping us clean and open.

There are plans, our actual hosting service has maintenance plans, but we could expect probably up to about $250/mo. for something like that.

As you all know we have raised money in the past, but it has all gone to the research. So if we wanted to hire this service it would have to be an independent effort.

I think it could be worthwhile, both for maintaining channels open on research progress and almost more importantly, providing a place where people like your Skype pal could go and get connected to the POIS pipeline.

So 1) we'd have to see what the interest is in doing something like this, and 2) we'd have to develop a method to do it so that everyone would feel comfortable about outing their money in.

A dedicated sevice is clean and clear. We would all know what it was for and what the moeny is doing. It's just a matter of finding a way to pay. I think our hosting service has a pre-pay system, We could pay direct to them, and have "money in the bank" with them.

Let me know with reponses here what you'd all like to do.

BTW, registration is moderator authorized, but the new member has to send a separate EMail to admin@poiscenter.com with a clear and distinct title, (so it can be distinguished from the 300 spam requests per day), with a request to be authorized listing their username.

So Nightingale, for now, if your friend hasn't been able to sign up, perhaps he can try again and send a spearate mail as indicated above, and I'll get him in.

[Nightingale]

Thanks for the detailed post, Daveman. Very helpful. I'll pass the email along.

I find that this forum is crucial to our successes. If I put a dollar a day towards this forum, that would be roughly $30 a month for me. That's acceptable for what I would gain, a growing and vibrant community.

Could you provide a link to the hosting service and their costs? This would help us see exactly what we'd be getting, and who we'd be dealing with.

[Daveman]

Thanks for the detailed post, Daveman. Very helpful. I'll pass the email along.

I find that this forum is crucial to our successes. If I put a dollar a day towards this forum, that would be roughly $30 a month for me. That's acceptable for what I would gain, a growing and vibrant community.

Could you provide a link to the hosting service and their costs? This would help us see exactly what we'd be getting, and who we'd be dealing with.

I'm checking with the hosting service owner. He should get back to me quite shortly.

[dean93]

Oddly enough I sort of hope that there is a problem with registration; at least it would explain why there seems to be so little activity.

Also if someone wouldn't mind explaining what exactly would cost $250/month to maintain? Excuse my ignorance but it seems that at this point there are plenty of cheap ways to host websites/forums, even many that are completely free. I've hosted a few domains with moderate traffic for as little as $30 per month. I had issues with spam there as well, and figured out a few ways to nearly completely deal with it. Please contact me with more info, maybe I can be of assistance.

But the major point is that we can NOT have POIS members obstructed from participating. Without community we have no organization, and from there no action, no progress, no treatment, and no improvement in the lives of thousands of men who are miserable. Maybe sufferers have been trying time and time again to sign up and join in to the conversation, have failed, and given up. Perhaps they're all sitting and reading these very posts, but are unable to reply. I think that's actually very plausible. Personally in the three or so posts I've made here, there have been over 275 views, but only ONE reply. Either there is a dire lack of participation from members or these are people who are unable to join. Maybe both.

Actually, if I look down at that bottom of my homepage, I see this:

18 Guests, 1 User
:
dean93

I'm the only person viewing the site out of 19 that's actually able to sign in. I think this is a huge problem that needs to be solved ASAP.