About O-Zone Registration

This document describes the rationale for the O-Zone moving to registration, and a little bit about the registration process. Prospective posters are encouraged to read the entire document, as it is short and contains important information.

I. Why Registration?

For over a decade, the O-Zone operated as an open forum, without registration requirements. Why move to registration?

There are several reasons:

1. To enforce the "valid E-mail" policy. The O-Zone policies have always required a valid E-mail address for posting, but it was on the "honor system" and not always enforced. While the majority of posters followed the rules, a number of folks flaunted the rule. With registration, it is impossible to violate the rule -- a signup with an invalid E-mail address, or even a signup with a valid E-mail address whose messages are not readable by the prospective poster, cannot be activated.
2. To make Moderators' jobs easier. (a) Banning (usually by ISP) was somewhat of an art -- too narrow a ban would not lock out some nuisances, and too wide a ban could cause collateral damage. With registration, terminating an offender is as simple as deactivating their account. (b) We've been seeing an increasing number of people try to spam the forum with ads, and this is an easy way to lock them out.
3. To reduce the amount of drive-by trolling. The registration process takes some amount of time and effort. It is much more work to sign up for an account than it is for a moderator to terminate it. This makes it "costly" for drive-by trolls to cause trouble in the forum, and means that those pathetic folks will seek amusement elsewhere.

The primary, underlying reason is: the site ownership felt that the forum experience for Ohio State fans would be improved by going to a registration-based posting system.

II. What's the process?

The registration process is quite simple:

1. You go to the "Registration Page," enter your desired handle, a valid E-mail address, and your desired password (twice).
2. The system sends an E-mail to the address you specified. This E-mail contains a link that must be visited in order to enable the account. The link includes a fairly long string of random characters that cannot be guessed -- when this string is returned to the O-Zone server, it demonstrates that the registrant is the owner of the recipient E-mail account. This step will prevent any account registered with invalid E-mail data, from ever becoming active.
3. When the link is visited, the correct random string is returned to the O-Zone server, and the account is activated. Sometimes (for example when hit-and-run troll activity might be high, such as during a game) there might be a delay of several hours in between when the E-mail is sent and when the link will be honored.
4. Once the account is activated, posts are made using the E-mail address and password chosen on the registration screen. It is not necessary to enter the handle, as the system will use the E-mail address to look up the handle associated with that E-mail and automatically add it to the post. The "public E-mail" check-box will work as before, hiding your E-mail address from everyone other than forum admins, if you un-check it.

III. Why should I give my E-mail address to the O-Zone?

If you've been following O-Zone policies, you've already been doing that -- it just wasn't validated directly. If you weren't following O-Zone policies, you shouldn't have been posting, anyway.

We're all very sensitive about spam. You can trust that the O-Zone will not use your E-mail address for bulk mailing, or give it to anyone else. The O-Zone is not collecting E-mail addresses for any nefarious purpose, they are merely ensuring that the valid E-mail policy -- which many other forums enforce as well -- is followed. You don't have to supply an E-mail address to read the forum.