We welcome anyone who is interested in knowing more about the New England Amateur Radio Festival, (often called "NEAR-Fest" or just "Deerfield") and participating in our forums.
PLEASE NOTE: Registration is only required if you want to post messages to the Forum. There is no other reason to register. It has nothing to do with the hamfest per se. Also if you registered in the past there is no need to register again. Please be sure that you are not already registered before sending in your request.
Back when we started using the forum style of Web experience we utilized an "auto-registration" feature for everyone's convenience. However, for the last few years the "spambots" have been attempting to exploit our automated registration system at a very high rate (often 50-60 bogus registration applications per day) along with attempts to post SPAM, including hard-core pr0n) to our Forums. Many of this vermin, mostly of foreign origin, obviously have no interest in our hamfester and will contribute nothing but garbage and crap to the NEAR-Fest community. We consider these assaults on our system as a hostile invasion and this is simply not acceptable. We will not tolerate this site defaced and sullied by scum!
Consequently I have invoked our current registration policy. To keep our subscriber base as pristine as possible I have decided to disable the auto-subscription feature and henceforth anyone wishing to register will have to do so manually. Please be patient if it doesn't happen fast enough to suit you. We are volunteers and have real lives too. Furthermore, anyone not logging on for over 666 days (almost two years) will be automatically unsubscribed.
The procedure is simple. Just send an e-mail to: w1rc@near-fest.com requesting forum registration. You will need to provide the following information:
User ID requested (if you are a licensed radio amateur we would very much prefer everyone to use their call sign as their user id. If not licensed choose a userid. If a business you may use your business name.)
E-Mail address (must be current)
Password (may be changed later)
We will then register you manually. Once this has been done you will then be required to activate your account before becoming a member of our community. You will receive an e-mail with a link to that effect. Finally, PLEASE read the user agreement.
I am sorry to have to go this route but we want to keep the NEAR-Fest Forum free of SPAM, pr0n (Anthony's Wiener) and other garbage and this is the only way I know how to do it. Quite frankly we would rather spend the time doing manual registrations before the fact than waste more time later cleaning up the mess created by these spamming scumbags.
Anyone got a better way I''d sure like to hear from you.....................
73,
Mister Mike, W1RC
PS: The manual registration procedure is working, although it is somewhat inconvenient. In the six years since we instituted it there have been NO spambot incursions or phony registration made to our Forums. We restored the auto-registration feature for a day to see what would happen and we were inundated with the whole gamut of garbage. So, inconvenient as it may seem, it works.
