As you've probably noticed, there no handy link for creating new accounts leads you nowhere useful, and does not, in fact, allow you to create a new account. This was not always the case. When I first set up the original LGN Forums, I simply gave the address to my buddies, they passed it on, and a memberbase of close friends was formed for the site. As of this writing, that's still the case - in fact, there are few members now who didn't join within a week or two of the inception of the original forums.

However, before too terribly long, a flaw in this open-forum plan appeared: spammers and ad-bots. Annoying twerps we wanted nothing to do with created accounts just to waste our time, and automated salesprograms registered and posted barely-legible topics attempting to sell us Canadian drugs and suede shoes. At first, I simply banned spammers and deleted ad-bots. Unfortunately, while the spammers were thankfully few in number, the ad-bots, after their first initial trickle of one or two accounts, started to register and droves, and eventually a positive flood of virtual warehawkers showed itself.

On the second iteration of the forums, I set up a system requiring all new accounts to be validated by a forum administrator - Redstar or myself - before they could post. Unfortunately, this only served to transform the pestering ad-bots from a forum-disrupting irritant to something of a cumbersome zen-garden type hobby in which I slowly clicked a hundred check boxes and deleted all validating "members" - in other words, validating bots - every couple of days.

When we finally moved to our current address and rebooted the forums once more, my hope was that the ad-bots would never bother us again, and at first this was the case. Unfortunately, after the first month or so, they did find us once again. My new registration system was that all new members would receive an e-mail and be required to validate their own account, but the ad-bots seemed to be capable of bypassing this security measure: they had their own e-mail addresses. The zen garden was growing again, and I was once again deleting a member and a topic or two every time I checked my forums.

Finally, I was struck by a realization: why have new registrations at all? In the last year and a half or so, every single new registration that I hadn't personally preside over - in other words, signing up my cousins while they were at my house during summer break - had been either a spamming nooblet or an ad-bot. These forums are, as I said, a community for my good friends and my relatives, and we all know one another in the physical world. What random person we don't know could possibly join who we'd want to deal with?

So here's the deal as it stands today: new registrations are locked, and LGN is officially an invite-only community. Nobody can join these forums unless Redstar or I personally allow them to. This means you'll have to send one or both of us an e-mail through the contacts link on the main page if you're interested in joining. I'm going to tell you right now that sending that e-mail does not at all guarantee you an account. Your e-mail should tell us a little bit about who you are and give us an idea of your personality, and it will be publicly posted and voted on by the current members to determine whether or not you're let in. If anyone has any questions or comments about this system, feel free to contact me through e-mail.