so while i’m all the way over in this forum, i’m going to ask something else that i wonder.
a couple of times, in threads i generally dont remember (but i think one was the big long foreskin/noskin thread, kind of towards the end) someone will start posting who isnt a user and isnt a BANNED but is “guest” or “not yet registered” or the particularly troubling “n/a.” or something like that.
how can he post if he (or she or it) is not registered? and what would it mean if they were n/a?
(when the guy in the foreskin/noskin came in and started backing “JDT” i figured it was really cecil adams coming in to stur the turd, as it were. cause if i was cecil adams, that’s what i would have done. am i right? do those things mean it is cecil? that is my guess, anyway.)
Well, there are a couple explanations. The first is that they asked to be unregistered, and were. This only happens rarely, as the name is removed from the database, so it could be used by others. Another is that they were banned prior to the great software switch of April 27th, 2000. Due to the fact that the old software allowed an unregistered status for a poster without removing them from the database, banning someone meant unregistering them. Another explanation is that something screwed up when the message board changed software, and a poster in good standing shows unregistered status in that post. In that case, often the next post is blank, and attributed to someone named reg.
One other point which I think waterj2 was alluding to but never explicitly said:
If someone posted before the 4/27/00 switch from UBB to VBB but has never posted since, he or she shows up as a “Guest” with not yet registered below his/her name. Obviously, this person did indeed register, and is on the server’s accepted users list, and the first post he or she makes in VBB will rectify this glitch.
Tuba? Lynn? Are all the details of that last paragraph on target? I know the gist of it is, but I’m not positive about details – like needing to refresh one’s registration and such?
On some of the really old threads, long before the switch, everyone is listed as a guest. Other times, random people, for example I saw one the other day where it happened to DSYoungEsq, have their status listed as guest, with a blank post by reg following. Since DSYoungEsq has posted many times since the change (though not enough recently, IMHO) I doubt this is the phenomenon you are referring to.
Oh, another thing is that before the software switch, if you changed user names, the first became unregistered. Thus, posts by Flora McFlimsey, SmackD, or Puffington will all say unregistered. That reminds me, who did Puffington become?
I was going to post that Ed Zotti had posted recently with the status Guest.
But when I went to paste the thread number I realized it must be an old one that was raised. How to get your own post removed
Ed’s post was on 08-09-1999 02:40 PM, but everyone was talking about it as if it were recent information.
So, what I’m saying is that a raised thread can fool you into thinking the Guest status is new when it isn’t.
