Membership Requiring Approval

[Paanda 9]

How does one feel about joining forums that require a staff member to approve/reject your membership? I've not seen a lot of forums doing this anymore. Does this still go on?

[s3_gunzel 297]

It does - and in our formative days we did it as well because we were getting a lot of spam registrations. 

[Paanda 9]

1 minute ago, s3_gunzel said:

It does - and in our formative days we did it as well because we were getting a lot of spam registrations. 

Do you think it bogs down actual members interest in joining?

[s3_gunzel 297]

1 hour ago, Paanda said:

Do you think it bogs down actual members interest in joining?

I think it does - but at one point we had no choice. 

[Cardinal 26]

Seems similar to an invite only system. Your membership will decline as people do not want to wait to join a forum, unless of course there is something on there that entices them. Usually downloads or something, and then they sorta vanish. 

[Naiwen 1]

I don’t do this myself as I think it’s a hassle more than anything else thence why I just ban troublesome members and spammers. 

[WebHook 2]

On 12/19/2020 at 9:38 PM, Paanda said:

Do you think it bogs down actual members interest in joining?

Most will still join, but leave once they see they must be approved before posting. Serious members will come back and post. 

[Claraviolet 0]

It's not a good idea to have membership approval unless it's to prevent spam.

Not many people would stick around a lot of time to get that approval. So, I wouldn't recommend that to any forum in general. Still, if you are getting too much spam content, then that's another story.

I am sure some people would come back to post after getting the approval but not all of them.