Wondering why the list of current forum members dropped suddenly?
I pared the the final group of users who registered but never activated their forum accounts (from 2005) from the NSS Forum memberlist and we now have a few more than 950 cavers registered on the forum. I had hoped to reach the magic 1,000 users mark by our year anniversary, but I'm sorry to say we didn't make it.
Many of the accounts I deleted today appeared to be spammers, based on their e-mail addresses. (In the standard phpBB configuration, a person registering can list their Web site URL without activating, so spam bots register to get the link up on sites and never come back. I have taken that step out of the registration process for this forum. You have to be an activated user to list a Web site in your profile here).
I have also taken steps to slow down or thwart future spam bot registrations by inserting an extra step in the cavechat registration process that involves a pull-down menu that must be selected to continue the registration.
The daily number of posts and the variety of cavers participating on Cavechat also seems to have increased significantly since the convention. Welcome to all the new users!