New members

[Betsy]

I've adjusted some of the privilages new members get. This is in response to a complaint received from a member about one person who joined and then proceeded to attempt to go through the member list emailing folks asking questions. Unsolicited email is spam no matter how you look at it. Unless there is already some type of relationship established, it's not a nice, polite thing to do. Spam complaints can cause our mail server to be blocked internet wide and while we had nothing to do with it, it came from our server and thus we are responsible for it. Please do not send people email through the Bodies Like Ours server unless they specifically ask for it or there is already a relationship of some type established. If another complaint arises, I'll be forced to discontinue the ability to email other members completely.

So, in response, new folks who register will not have access to the member list until they have made at least 5 posts or 5 days have passed. These numbers may be adjusted as necessary and without notice.

New members will not gain private messaging privilages until the threshold outlined above has passed. This is because while pruning stuff, I noticed there are many many users who post once (or never) yet use us as a private mail system. I've also made the adjustments I previously spoke about and also made adjustments to those on moderation, etc. Once someone comes off moderation or passes the threshold to become a fully "registered" member, they gain full privileges.

Fact is, BLO is not a private mail system. It's resource and disk space intensive to provide the private messaging and this is simply bringing it down to reasonable levels which gives folks the ability to make contact off board but not to abuse it.

The availability of member information will hopefully be more respectful of people's privacy while keeping those who wish to spam at bay.

Any new registrations who fall under these thresholds as of this writing will be grandfathered in provided the registration is at least 5 days old and/or they have made at least one post. If I missed you and you are having problems, fire me off an email. You can use the form in the main website if you don't have my email.

Registrations made from now on are subject to the above restrictions.

Thanks,

Betsy