Great Western Coffee Shop

We've now got 747 members ... and that's not bad going for a niche forum such as ours.  But what our regular  members won't realise is that nearly a thousand applications have been made for accounts, and that the administrators have rejected one in every four.  We welcome all views (subject to our acceptable user policy), so why do we turn away so many applicants?

Regrettably, there are people who want to sign up to forums such as our to use them as a free advertising medium ... looking to sell products that are nothing at all to do with what we cover at "The Coffee Shop" even on the most liberal of interprettations, or simply looking to get their names / signatures / web addresses on our lists to help them with their search engine placements.   The administrators routinely research signups that ring warning bells with them, and reject those which are obviously out of order.   Those which are clearly fine are approved, and in the case of "close calls", we'll email the applicant and ask him/her to let us know a little bit more - why they're interested in British train services if they live in a country that has few travel links to the UK, for example.

This post is here to give our regular members some insight into what happens behind the scenes, and I'll be pointing applicants whose applications cause concern at it too.   If you have received an email from our registration system telling you that your application has been initially rejected, but actually you did have a contribution to make within our AUP, then please email me - graham at wellho dot net - and let me know more, as I have described in the previous paragraph. Thanks! - Graham

A quick update on a very old topic indeed ... the number of members here has doubled since it was first written - it's that old!

Signups from way, way outside our area or interest - from people looking for a free place to post their adverts (for example), became (and remain) a major problem.  And the admin team has become past masters at spotting them.  I won't say how, as that might give the game away, but we have a point scoring system that's usually very helpful to us.

But - occasionally - we look at a request and think "I don't know about this one". Further research may not resolve the issue, either.   As we can't really take the risk of accepting too many requests incorrectly (with the pollution they could cause, and extra clean up work), we tend to err on the side of caution and "reject with email".   And that email of rejection points to this thread.

If you have received such an email as a result of your application, and feel that we have been too cautious, please write and let me know by email - graham / at / wellho.net.   I would far rather hear from a genuine new member than have a potential member walk away in a huff.   And give me a bit of background so that I can turn around and say "oops - misjudged that one" or something similar, and welcome you to the forum.