Keep a VALID email address!

About This Message Board
1

I am about to go and fix someone’s user privileges again, because this person changed his/her email address to a bogus address. When you change your email address, the system will AUTOMATICALLY send you a confirmation email to the new address. You will be locked out of the system until you respond to that confirmation email. If that email address was invalid, guess what? You just locked yourself out of the SDMB. Then you have to email an administrator and ask to have your privileges restored.

SO don’t register with an invalid email address. Don’t change your email to an invalid address. Otherwise, it just inconveniences everyone.

Lynn
For the Straight Dope

3

Well, instead of this sticky warning folks about it, Lynn could always just decide to ban posters with invalid email addresses for breaking the registration agreement.

That’s what I’d do.

Lynn, can I have your job?

4

I am not getting this, if it’s a joke.

If it’s serious, it’s the most mind-bogglingly stupid thing I’ve ever read.

5

Really? You have the stats for the number of users with invalid email addresses who have emailed the board admins to get their access fixed? How does one obtain that info?

:rolleyes:

6

Manually restoring privileges is a minor nuisance to me. However, it’s a greater nuisance to the posters who have accidentally locked themselves out, because it’s entirely possible that I will not check my email for up to 12 hours at a time on a normal day. If my internet connection is down, then the person who is locked out is even MORE inconvenienced.

Even before we upgraded the vBulletin software, I could count on getting one or two people a week who needed their privileges reset. It’s really quite a minor thing, but it happens on a regular basis. We’ve had announcements about this before, but since we’ve got an active, more important announcement, I figured I’d just make a sticky thread because it DOES happen so often.

Theoretically, yeah, people are breaking the user agreement and they could be warned, suspended, or banned. Generally, though, I figure that not being able to access the SDMB when they want to will drive the point home far better than any other action I could take.

Since this thread is becoming nothing more than a troll magnet, I’ll just lock it.

Lynn

7

I figure the best way to draw attention to this is to post to it again.

Please, keep a valid email address in your registration!!