samnavy

iTrader: (7)

I'm in the process of researching building an 8" sub to complement my new TV audio system, and I registered at Home Theater Systems and Design, Electronics Retailer and Forum: HomeTheaterShack. The registration forces you down a path of very careful explanations of forum rules and suggestions, lots of big highlighted "YOU MUST DO THIS BEFORE YOU CAN REGISTER" type of stuff, makes you fill in your location, and several other things that I thought were pretty sweet. I liked thier registration format a lot. It was quite clear that this was a place to go for good information and not to **** around.

It was easy to register, and didn't take anymore time than registering for any other forum, but you definitely get the feeling that this forum takes itself more seriously than others... makes it seem a little more legit. It might be worth a look by the admin/mods to see if any of their format could be incorporated into ours... continuing the recent trend of improving NOOB/Veteran relations.

You don't have to actually register... but you could get all the way up to actually clicking the button and then back out. There's even a timer at the bottom of the page that makes you wait 30 seconds after filling out the last block before you can hit the register button.

It's worth a look.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I just signed myself up.

That page is very well thought-out in terms of defeating spambots. It uses two distinct forms of CAPTCHA, in a manner that is much more user-friendly than the traditional box containing a couple of warped random letters and numbers, and which is at the same time probably even more resiliant to automated attack.

The problem is that it didn't make me actually pay attention to anything other than finding the picture of Einstein and typing the words "nine" and "five" into two fields. I saw a couple of checkboxes with big words next to them, so I clicked on them without reading anything. I have absolutely no idea what I just agreed to, but if someone breaks into my house and sodomizes my cat tomorrow night, then shows me a form with my name and IP address on it proving that I consented to cat-rape this afternoon, I'll have a pretty good idea where it came from.

IOW, I like the idea, and I see where you're going with this, but I don't think it actually accomplishes much.

edit:
On the other hand, having just now logged into my newly activated account, I do like that the very first thing that happened was that I got a PM from the admin, written in relatively firm language, that basically laid out the forum's "Don't be a douche" policy in a pretty unambiguous way.


edit 2:I find it interesting that they have a dedicated Post-Padding thread, where "If you are not a spammer you may post your required number of posts here in order to have the initial forum restrictions lifted." Not sure whether I agree or disagree with that policy.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

WOW!!!
That forum is great. I just tried to start my first thread, and when I clicked the NEW THREAD button in their NOOB section, a Pop-Up appeared and directed me to a "YOU MUST READ AND CLICK AT THE BOTTOM BEFORE YOU CAN START A NEW THREAD". Of course I had to scroll for about 5 seconds before I got to the bottom so I didn't bother reading everything, but if we had that here, and if was just one screens' worth of BIG BOLD LETTERS saying something like:

BEFORE YOU START YOUR FIRST THREAD HERE AT MIATATURBO.NET, HAVE YOU ADDED YOUR LOCATION TO YOUR PROFILE, FILLED IN YOUR SIGNATURE, READ ALL THE STICKY'S IN ALL THE FORUMS, AND SEARCHED FIRST FOR YOUR ANSWER??? IF SO, THEN YOU MAY CLICK AT THE BOTTOM THAT YOU UNDERSTAND, AND THAT YOU'LL BE CRAPPED ON IF YOU DON'T!

Dude, what a cool thing!

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

Something else I found.
I just linked a photo using the "insert image" function, and in the MESSAGE block, while I was still composing, the image appeared... and it had those little micro-boxes in each corner of the image so you could actually drag the image bigger/smaller while still composing.

I'll often want to link an image, but don't need it to take up half of somebody's screen. Currently we have the resizer function active for embedded links, but I like their method better.