December 21, 2004
A nicer way to handle account approvals
Aristotle proposes a more user-friendly modus operandi for sites that require new user accounts to be approved by a moderator:
(...) let users write posts before their account is approved. (...) Their messages won't show up as long as the account is marked as unapproved, however. As soon as an account gets approved, all the previous and any future messages posted using that account show up immediately. This way, new users can butt into a discussion as quickly as possible while spammers remain locked out.
Something like this would already work in Movable Type if anyone would care to sign up for Six Apart's Typekey service, which is not the case.
I think Aristotle's idea would be particularely effective on discussion forums, where posters tend to stick around for a while. His idea wouldn't make such a difference for weblogs, where you have a large percentage of hit-and-run contributions by commenters with no plans to ever return. But more on that in my next entry.
