Quote Originally Posted by shoveler View Post
I do however find it hard to navigate here. Is this because the lack of trust? how long for that to pass?
Yes, it's a lack of trust. I've had severe problems with hackers and spammers here over the years. Last summer, I probably spent 3 hours per day dealing with them.

I spent probably 500 hours this winter gradually ID'g and blocking many of the sources and tools used by hackers and spammers, and the problem is much, much better this year. But, by the time I was sure it was better, I was too busy to make changes in how things are structured. (And, we couldn't have handled the additional traffic we would have had, if I'd opened things up!)

I'm about to make some significant changes, that will allow some much greater access.

However, there's a trade-off involved. Lots of people prefer to be anonymous on the Internet: I understand that; I do too. Unfortunately, that is one of the key characteristics of spammers and hackers who register: they do so very anonymously.

In fact, if I excluded everyone who used a potentially anonymous address like Gmail or Yahoo, or an unverifiable address, like PO Box 1234, Pittsburg, PA, OR no physical address at all . . . I'd automatically eliminated 99+% of the spammer and hackers who've tried to register here. That's not to say that everyone with a Gmail address is a spammer -- I have a Gmail address. And, not everyone with a PO Box is a hacker -- I have a PO Box, too.

But people with verifiable physical addresses (and a few other characteristics) are almost NEVER hackers and spammers; people with anonymous registrations some times turn out to be just that.

So . . . the changes I'll be making will favor those who aren't anonymous, which is about 40 - 60% of my registrations. I'm not penalizing those who are -- but things won't change for them.

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By the way, the "inert ingredients" in your trichlor almost certainly are NOT inert with respect to your pool chemistry. They are inert only in the sense that they don't contribute to sanitation!