Great Western Coffee Shop

Greetings to the new members who signed up yesterday ... but whom I didn't get a chance to authorise for about 12 hours.  My apologys for the delay - I'm always especially keen to check the "bona fide"s of sign up requests very quickly indeed as the last thing you want as a newcomer saying "please may I join" is to be told "we'll get back with you".

Regrettably, we do have to look at each sign up request and sanity check it, even with the "please retype this word" option turned on, and there is no easy way to automate this.  We're looking to exclude people who have no interest in public transport, nor in the South West of England, South Wales or Thames Valley - the requests from people who, when you research them, seem to spend their lives selling pharmaceutical products via the web  ;)

Yesterday's hold up?  I was travelling from Melksham to Blue Ridge, Georgia - regrettably unable to use FGW's excellent servives to Gatwick due to lack of anything at the time we needed at the Melksham end - it's an old story, but it's the sort of frustration that lay behind the creation of "The Coffee Shop" in the First place.

The question has been asked "why does each new member need to be authorised anyway?".   The answer is more general that just a Coffee Shop thing, so I have posted further here (http://www.wellho.net/mouth/2116_Why-do-we-delay-new-forum-members-through-authorisation-.html) for anyone who would like to read the detail.