>Thanks for the response. I appreciate that you do a much better job (IMO) than the majority of other sites. And I am glad to here that you take the task of authenticating new members seriously.

The task security has vastly improved when malicious users started to create a bunch of fake identities, when hackers tried to use UT as a testing site, when some individuals were using multiple accounts in parallel to fight between each other and such. The UT is a professional Web site, and as oppose to the majority of Web sites over there, this is something we didn't have to manage for years. Most of our users are professionals and our audience is targeted. But, after a few years, we had some issues and we had to implement a stronger security.

As oppose to several other sites, we do not gather as much accounts as possible just so to show that our number of members is big. Whatever is duplicate is removed, and for new accounts, merged. Whatever doesn't make sense and whatever evidences we have to believe that an account is fake, it's not authorized. Our goal is not to gather as much accounts as possible but to target to have the limited number of accounts that we have to be valid and well used. Sometimes, we clean up old accounts as well. For those that the member never went back to UT or never created some content with, we would do some cleanup as those won't be probably never used by a member after six years for example. In such situations, an account that was created but never used has zero impact on the data. But, for sure, if an old account is not used anymore but has been used to create content, we will keep it onboard for the data integrity and as per our politic.

So, from the account approval task to the ongoing monitoring of them, we're there and working for the best of this service.

>My post was intended to relate more to future potential trolling - which I suspect is likely to increase. Not having been through the new member sign-up since 98 (I think) I cannot really comment on how much it puts in the way of the "I just want to sign up to annoy people" type of member. For sure, any measures must balance the conflicting requirements of ease and obstacle.

"trolling" is a definition that will differ from one member to another. We had all kinds of threads since UT's debut. That is normal. This is a community and, as far as this forum goes, it's not necessary being used by VFP base developer so in some cases, an opposite opinion will be written. This is just the way it is. For a VFP base developer, using a Delphi site for example, there is a good chance that the tonality of the content would be made towards VFP which may frustrate some users over there. The same has happened here at several occasions. The vice versa situation was seen. We also had some UT VB forum users doing the same here and vice versa. In most cases, there is no malicious ideas when such a thread is being created. The member simply express an opinion or a concern for example and some others may see it bad.

>Regarding the $5 base charge - yes I would be happy to pay something without necessarily getting anything more than I already get: that is, access to probably the best VFP site on the Internet. Others, however, might not feel the same way. Have you considered a subscription that is somewhere between PUTM and Free? These choices seem to be all, or nothing. How about a budget option, that allows a small number of searches per month, twit filter, etc.

Since the first day, if UT would run from an external budget, it would have probably been on a general subscription basis. By that, we would have assure a higher quality of serious expressed by the number. Despite the fact that many would agree that this site is really good as oppose to others, it would have been a step higher in such circumstances as when comes time to pay, many won't get involved if they don't have serious intentions to use the site properly.

But, making it on a subscription basis under these circumstances would simply lower the amount of potential developers who won't be able to participate anymore. So, it has always been a big NO so far in regards to that. We need to assure an ongoing existence and evolution of this product and that approach has been eliminated since a very long time.

>And while I am nit picking :-) The ability to edit a post (before anyone responds) is great. How about a mechanism that allows people to either make or request changes to poorly titled threads? This does not need to be all people, it could for example, just be people who have been members for more than a year and have more than X number of points in the last N months.

This is already in place. It's restriction to our team only. It won't be made public. There are serious reasons for that no matter who else additionaly could get involved. Even among our team, the rules are extremely strict before updating a title to fix a typo, or adjust a really unrelated title such as "Please help".