message board question

[TVB]

Of those who use message boards on their sites:

Do you use email validation before allowing registration? If you do, is there a loss rate of people who register and then never bother to reply to the email to finalize registration?

FQ folks...do you guys use it? I don't recall from when I registered.

Thanks,

Betsy

[Monty]

I personally don't use any form of registration and think that doing so, I get a lot of posters that are turned off by sites that do. In one recent case, I saw registration information used to contact an employeer during a fire fight. It wasn't pretty. The best registration system in the world is easily beat with one of the free email accounts that you can get, so I really don't understand the purpose of having one. A determined poster, can and will beat it, and I have even seen that happen here on this very forum.

Mont

[dank]

A determined poster, can and will beat it
On the other hand, a not overly determined poster/spammer/abuser will be deterred by it.

Dan

[Aaron O'Neil]

I leave it as an option on my boards. I personally get turned off by boards that require a registration so I don't enforce it on my own. If people want to register that's available -- gets them their own name and stats and signatures. On the other side of that, I have a lot of people who signed up and I know never came back -- dunno why they bothered really.

[Bill211]

I require email verification. I believe that in at least *some* cases where a person signs up but never returns, it's either that they've given an incorrect email address, or they lose the link to the message board.

I use the email addresses to publish (about once every couple of months) a "newsletter", informing them of changes that have been made, new features, etc. That also gives me an opportunity to present the link to the site again, and I notice that my traffic generally increases for several days after such an email.

I also use it occasionally to contact a member that has posted inappropriately. We've implemented some very specific guidelines about the "tone" of our board, but periodically, some members need to be reminded. And I prefer to have them edit their post rather than doing it myself, though sometimes that becomes necessary too. :(

The software I use allows members the option to *not* receive such emails, but only a very few have chosen not to allow them.

[TVB]

Maybe I wasn't clear. Anyone can post on my boards, registered or not but certain stuff like member info (I use vBulletin) is restricted to registered members. For those that would like to register, I was wondering if I should use email verification for precisely the reason Bill uses it, and as a level of accountability for those with access to info unavailable to non-registered members.

Betsy

[Bill211]

It's not a foolproof validation, as was noted above, but it's probably the best you can do (given dynamic/shared IP addresses and free email accounts). It's just my personal opinion, but if registration is used to grant access to "restricted" information, I would think it would be in everyone's best interest to, as much as possible, verify that registered members are who they say they are.

As for it being a turnoff, I can only speak from my particular experience. My board is quite small (total of about 120 members), but I have 40 plus members that post regularly. From what I've seen on other boards, that's a fairly high percentage of "active" members.

[TVB]

Thanks everyone,

I'm going to leave it with email verification for those who choose to register and get the extras. I appreciate the guidance.

Betsy