Registration for the forum is unsual

[minimalistgamer]

Hello moderators,

I just registered for this forum, and I have to say the process of registration is kind of unusual. Why am I being asked to specify where MMM lives, or finish one of his one-liners?

I understand that this is your forum, and you can make the rules however you want. I am just curious as to what the idea behind that is.

Thanks,
MG.

[marty998]

It's there to stop spam accounts.

The robots can't figure it out...yet. Soon enough there will need to be higher hoops to jump through.

[undercover]

It's a very rudimentary form of security to prevent spam. Although, if someone really wanted to, they could easily just set their bots to automatically input this information. It keeps the "honest criminals" out. A captcha would obviously be 10x more effective. This isn't really a high profile forum, thus no need for high-profile security.

This isn't some sort of cult where you have to be initiated...it's just simple stuff that you can Google if you didn't already catch. Don't overthink it :P

[Mattzlaff]

But welcome to the cult!

[minimalistgamer]

I understand, but there is also a captcha to go along with the questions.

That's the part I don't really understand. Either way, not trying to criticize, just curious.

Thanks,
MG.

[nobodyspecial]

I understand, but there is also a captcha to go along with the questions.

Captchas are easy to beat, worst case you pay a company a $1/1000 to have some kid in the 3rd world type them.
The other questions would need a distinct effort to lookup, not worth it for a typical advertising bot farm
 

[minimalistgamer]

I understand, but there is also a captcha to go along with the questions.

Captchas are easy to beat, worst case you pay a company a $1/1000 to have some kid in the 3rd world type them.
The other questions would need a distinct effort to lookup, not worth it for a typical advertising bot farm
 

Got it. Thanks a lot.

[arebelspy]

The idea is the above, to keep spammers out, and in theory, they're supposed to be easy questions anyone who's read the blog and wants to participate in the community should be able to answer.

This was the case when they were set up (forum launched in Feb 2012, blog was less than a year old, itself launching in April 2011), as anyone who had read to that point would know them.

Now the facts asked are mentioned less often, and there's way more articles, so they've become a bit tougher for someone just stumbling on the site and having read just a few articles.