Registering for an account on the forum.

[Wafflem]

In the Users Online where it shows a list of what users are doing (only if you are logged in), I've noticed some guests are "Registering for an account on the forum." but they don't end up getting an account on the forum. How does that happen? Just curious.

[namida]

Three possibilities:

1) Spambots being stopped in their tracks by the CAPTCHA and/or security questions
2) Non-spam bots archiving / checking the site (for example, search engines)
3) Actual humans who decide to register but in the end don't do so (or perhaps can't answer the security questions, hopefully not this though)

In case it is the last one and the security questions are the reason, I'm contemplating whether to remove the security questions or not. So far, the situation with them has remained almost the same since I first put these boards up; the initial requirements were security questions and a captcha on registration, and security questions (but IIRC, no captcha) when posting if you have less than one post already, and when sending a private message if you have less than 5 posts. The one thing I changed since then was the private messages, which I reduced to only needing 1 post to avoid the questions. Of course it's possible the spambots simply haven't tried, but more likely, the current measures are adequate to keep them out - the question is whether they're overkill or not.