Originally posted by D
A friend of mine just tried to join and he told me he was just rejected just like that without being asked to fill out anything.

There must be some confusion. You can't apply for membership without being asked to fill out the form. Look at the new user registration screenshot below.

I must say that I agree with a lot of the other members when I say that this is going to be a bottleneck for the free expression of ideas across the board. I can hardly think that the year and a half or so ago when I became a member, I belive that I would have been rejected for some pretty outrageous ideas, many which have been changed by ATS to help me understand the finer concepts of my ideas. I strongly think that this will not only restrict the full spectrum of every topic, but limit it to those who only meet a single persons criteria for a good poster. It's important to get the entire spectrum of a topic, no matter how good or how bad it is. Now don't get me wrong, I am not for the NAZI's or the "Moon Landing Fake" group, but their ideas are just as important as te next. We are restricting the pool of applicants who may very well have constructive and essential point of views that need to be heard. I proably would not have typed in a paragraph of information because I do not like to type. I WOULD LIKE TO STRONGLY OPPOSE THE USE OF THIS METHOD! This is just another method of restricting the potential this web page has. This is a truly sad time for ATS. You may add a check to the against colum. -Muzz

I think it's a good idea.

The advantages far outweigh the bad points and with a bit of luck it'll stem the flow of troublesome posters.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
Have no fear... at this point, the only "rejections" are those who enter nothing, or something very stupid (or vulgar). If someone can't take the time to create at least one sentence to introduce themselves to us, then we'd rather not open our doors.

Maybe it would be a good idea to indicate in the registrating screen that entering a short description is mandatory, and if they do not, they are automatically rejected.

Personally when I sign up for various websites, I usually skip such things as "describe why you wish to join" or "how did you find this website?" etc - or I'd simply enter a few random characters just to make the automatic script process my registration.

So perhaps it would be prudent to inform people just how important this short description is, and that whether they are accepted or not rides entirely on what they write in the description.

You should give out a special title for members who review applications, such as Recruiter.

the roots? im really not sure what our roots our anymore, perhaps a time before i arrived, who knows. What happened to the caliber of member such as dragonrider and those who gave a quality response for the sake of discussion? I say points are partly to blame, as even I am guilty of throwing out a random assortment of words resembling a rebuttle in efforts to get my 250 for the month to get back into RATS.

I say we have a random rejected app generator, for the general members to view. Perhaps a save system where a certain app can gain enough points to override staff decisions. I am 100% behind the pending-approval system, but its the submission staff that must be top notch. Otherwise this is all so very useless. Hell I'de volunteer to review apps, as if anyone cared.

I am interestedto study about mind reading techniques

Interesting to study about radio active veapons

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
Have no fear... at this point, the only "rejections" are those who enter nothing, or something very stupid (or vulgar). If someone can't take the time to create at least one sentence to introduce themselves to us, then we'd rather not open our doors.

As related above, the new procedures are lax. You do not have to produce a doctoral thesis to become a member. It spurred me more to join seeing that a submission was required. (Although some of the applications were less than stellar, mine included , I seem to think some of the applicants did not try nearly hard enough...oh well.)

Thanks for the approval to join youse guys and gals...

I just signed in under the new application process. It was one of the things that decided me on actually joining up. I don't like censorship or gestapo thugs telling me how to think, what to know and when to know it. But, I equally don't like belonging to a community that can be invaded by spammers, nut jobs, and people who just want to stir up trouble for people who like to think and learn. I did a five year stint as a co-moderator on a socio newsgroup--most of the people on that group were very glad to have moderators filtering the spam and flames so they could get on with real exchanges of ideas and ideals. So, while this process could be a disservice to some, from the Terms of Membership I read while thinking it over, I got a good impression of the folks who run this site as more concerned about integrity and fairness than many other sites out there. For this reason, having this process in place felt right.