I sent out an email to all the inactive members (anyone who hasn't logged in since 1AUG2014) informing them about the changes to the site/forum. I hope that the changes made are seen as an improvement and will get at least some of you coming back to the forum regularly. Would be nice to get some more voices on the forum. There were about 2,700 that received the email. More than expected.
I don't think I pissed any of them off and I know I have no problem with any of them. They should get the email. No way of knowing though. I have 400+ rejected emails (so far). Mostly Yahoo email accounts getting thrown back. I find it odd so many fake emails have been used by supposedly fully registered members.
Fake email when a new member signs in could be avoided by sending a link to that email account that has to be used for confirmation. But of course even after confirmation by a forwarded link, a new member can decide not to use that email account any more (most providers close an email account after 90 days of non activity or...?) and thus still generate a rejected mail. In generally I would suggest that a member who fails to sign in for one year should be considered as inactive and deleted with or without prior to notice him/her.
Everybody needs a "throwaway" email account for sites that require registration, but that one is not really interested in pursuing for the long term. I use one all the time for sites that are obviously interested in "mining" my information for marketing and sale. Although it is obvious to me that this forum is not set up for "mining," not everyone is interested in being here for the long-term and so they decided to not take the chance on being sold and spammed.
I would never sell emails to spammers or any other company, though I can understand why people would want a throw away email for some websites. I have no problem with people using them.....but at the same time they should realize that they will have problems logging in, resetting passwords or getting updates from the site that they used the fake email for. I personally have a yahoo email account that I throw out to sites I don't trust. I have left it inactive for years at time with no issues, other than needing to constantly do password resets for it. Again, no issues with people using fake emails but I will be deleting the 500 or so accounts that used them.....once I find an easy way to do it.
Yes, it's true. I have not been a very active member. I will try to do better in the future. having lived here for nearly 5 years, I think I may possibly be of help to some of the questions. One thing I would like to see is if members would post pictures in their avatar. It would be very helpful to know more about who we are talking to and give it a more personal feeling.
Click on Forum, Top left, then choose category and new topic shows on right of page. If you click on general chat on this page same will happen OK?
