PM activation & member selection

Hello there,

I registered as 'text.2014' on Jan. 14, 2014 just to see how the registration process unfolds.
I selected a username and password, I checked the box to acknowledge having read the Terms & Conditions (but in fact I HAVE NOT READ them at all), I clicked on ‘Next’, I went quickly over a page asking to describe my profile (I omitted to do so) and clicked on OK.
Voilà, I’m inside the forum, and so are thousands of persons who sign up here every month.

The signer has a chance to post replies and open threads, but no, all he wants is to contact the person who wrote that marvelous post which made him ‘attack’ the forum to begin with. (I confess: this is what actually happened to me in 2010 when I became a member here: I have never read the Terms & Conditions because I knew myself to be a nice guy who cannot make as big mistakes as to be banned from forums … At that moment, I was so happy to have found this forum and have the possibility to quickly contact a few persons who had written great posts that I inadvertently skipped steps in the registration process).
(Other people may register here for spamming or God knows what other nefarious reasons, which is information you, the forum management, have and know better than us, expat members, the forummers. Fine.).

Conclusion: it is dangerously easy for somebody to register here.

I am sure you know that, as a standard procedure, most forums have a default feature whereby the new signer gets a welcome message in the same e-mail address with which he registered, where there is a link he must click on for his account to be automatically activated.
Not this time in Jan. 14, 2014: such link was missing not because you forgot it, but rather because you made things easy for new signers to become new members.

I did not even have to check my e-mail: the system allowed me to quickly go into action.
When I checked my e-mail, I got a simple ‘Welcome’ message which included a few introductory sentences.  (If I had not checked my e-mails, I would not even have known a message waits for me, this is how easy becoming a member here now is).
The way the system is now it allows for anybody to even type in a non-existent e-mails address, something to which somebody with good intentions would NEVER resort to.

Improvement
1). The first message a new signer gets should be a warning one as follows:

“Welcome to Expat-Blog.com,
Be warned we have rules in place as follows:

•    This is not a dating web site.
•    This is not a place to discus matters related to religion of any kind.
•    Same for politics.
•    This is not an opportunity for you to promote MLM schemes.
•    Also, soliciting business by expressly targeting and pressurizing existing forum members to buy products or services from you is totally forbidden.
•    If you have a web site, you may specify it in your profile or in the customizable ‘signature’ and it will show up in every thread you open or in every reply to posts you write, but do not conduct direct sales here at this forum.
Failure to do so will result in immediate deletion of your account with no extra reason given.
This forum is for expats to communicate with other expats and for potential expats to ask questions in order to get answers of general nature from existing expats.

For more details on forum usage, read the Terms & Conditions here …… {link} and click on the “Agree” button to become a full member.
If for whatever reason you feel you cannot respect our rules, we – The Management – have no interest in respecting your rules.”

This sample Welcome message SHOULD NOT mention anything about the 10-posts-for-PM-activation restriction.

2). The new signer clicks on the link and is redirected to the ‘Terms & Conditions’ web page where he will hopefully read the entire page.  Even if he does not, he already has an idea of what to expect from the Welcome message.

The first line on the T & C page should mention how PM privileges are granted.
The current requirement of minimum 10 posts for PM privilege activation may be increased to, say, 20 or, the permissioning must be re-programmed to track whether the new signer’s posts or threads are replied to as an indication from existing expats that the new signer’s is somebody worth accepting.

(Suggestion:
The Terms & Conditions may also be revised to simplify the wording and to shorten it; and no more typos please!).

3). He clicks OK becoming a new forum member (forummer).

4). When he begins posting nonsense, he gets 2 - 3 separate warnings before his account is deleted.

(This already happens now with the exiting system, but the downside is that Management has no way of knowing whether the new signer has read the T & C page entirely or not.  On top of that, the new signer is not warned briefly and categorically exactly during the registration process to make him aware that if he has other intentions than participating in the forum, he is not only unwelcome but also that his account will be deleted.
Warning him is in fact a service to him, to all us of existing expats, and a sigh of relief to all the moderators and management).

===

If the new signer is not presented with a reminder of what not to do in the Welcome e-mail message, a brutal system may be introduced whereby bad new signers are deleted by hand without explication.  Will such procedure make some of them want to read the T & C before re-registering?
(You must also redefine what you call “bad” new signers).

However, in a pacifist spirit, I believe in educating new signers on forum rules right during the registration process first, not through forcing him to check the box confirming the reading of the T & C page, but through actually making him do so through walking him via a warning e-mail message first and re-directing him to the T & C page second.
He will either go away never to return to this forum or will correct his manners to be up to a certain standard.

My message to top management
Congratulations for running the world’s #1 expat web site! … 
I know that going to the top was not easy.  Losers quit because for them everything is difficult and mainly because they do not have a big, sincere goal to motivate them anyway; winners press ahead and stop only at the top because they have something really good on their hands.  You are the winner!
What you have to do now is to stay at the top which should not be difficult considering the approximately 3-dozen major expat web sites on the Internet from where their mistakes and “success” may be analyzed.

For you to give a more pleasurable forum experience to prospective and existing expats and to hopefully make your work more enjoyable, I wish you to find ways to upgrade your shop into, say, a luxury duty-free shop where the many problems of running little and badly managed retail stores do not happen.

You will soon have a 1M-user membership base and if quality of service and quality of information you provide is not paid attention to, we - with all the mass deterioration of life going in the world now – shall see persons who can’t read and cannot really write typing disturbing messages like those below inexplicably and out of any rational context.

Blah, u r hear
caca maca
u odiots
i ned job

It’s great that now the post message window has full spell-check functionality. Thank you for it. However, due to the fact that many posters here do not even bother to use it, I wonder: what new deterioration will come here next?

If the 1M-member milestone is reached through satisfactory service to expats in the past and by your web site pulling its weight, I like to believe that from then on, management will pursue quality more than quantity. (I am not implying that this was not the case here so far!).
They say the first million is the most difficult to get. 

To attract quality expats, much more than changing the color of the web site from green to violet or introducing file attachment facility to PMs (which by the way I am against!) is required.

If you disregard my suggestion of introducing a revised pre-screening process for new signers, I shall be pleased to hear good news of something else better being put in place by management to more accurately separate the wheat from the chaff from you.  Doing nothing is not an option.
I either case, I thank you for providing me with the environment to express my thoughts freely.