User does not exist

[erato]

I registered a week ago and logged up a few posts. Suddenly I experience "This user does not exist", and sure enough, my previous ID don't exist in the member list. What happened?

[Alan Howe]

I am very sorry - I don't know what happened. We will investigate...

[Mark Thomas]

Erato, it may be my fault and if so then I apologise most sincerely. A few days ago I carried out one of my regular culls of the membership list, removing registrations by attempted spammers so that they can't spam and adding their details to the "Banned" list. I know that I accidentally removed Dundonell's registration in the process and it looks as if the same thing happened to yours.

In an ideal world I wouldn't have to fiddle around with such things and I'd much rather not do so but unfortunately I can't avoid having to do so.

I'm sorry if that's what happened.

[erato]

As I've already told Alan, it's no problem. I've already done my first download (Rosenberg no 5) and I'm greatly looking forward to it.

[markniew]

Hello Allan,

I faced the same? problem last week. I registered few weeks ago and sent 20-30 posts. and suddenly few days ago I was transformed into guest status so had to register anew. It's not a problem but I was just wondering what the reason of that was.
best,
Marek

[Mark Thomas]

Looks like I may need to apologise to you too, Mark, although I must say that I'm very surprised if I managed to delete members with posts to their credit.

[markniew]

 

[kitmills]

Hello,

I'm only an irregular visitor who just discovered the page a month ago, but both of the times I revisited the site (several weeks apart, I would guess), I had to register again, and was surprised to be able to do so using the exact same account name and password. 

Perhaps there's a glitch in the Matrix...

[Mark Thomas]

Perhaps there's a glitch in the Matrix...

Nice to see someone using a technical term!

No, no glitch. It's quite possible to register using a previously deleted combination of user name and password, provided the user name wasn't also banned when it was deleted (because it was used by a spammer for instance). If you have posted previously at all then your account shouldn't have been deleted, although I did unfortunately delete some active accounts about a month ago, as detailed above. Accounts which have been active for more than 60 days, and where the member has never posted are currently automatically deleted after 60 days, partly as a defence against sleeping spammers and also as a disincentive to those who register to get access to the downloads but don't contribute anything themselves.

[kitmills]

Thanks, Mark -

Well, now that I've posted a few things, that should keep me from appearing as a spammer.  Thanks for looking into it and responding to my note.

Thanks, too, for setting up this great forum!