I have a private forum and require sign up to access it, to add only verified users.
After users sign up, I have enabled this feature “must approve user” so I can see if the detailed required on sign up in “user fields” have correctly filled or not, once you find a genuine, verified user, their sign up is accepted and they are welcomed.
The problem comes when the user has intentionally entered wrong sign up details and now I have to accept the sign up and inform the user that your details are incorrect and kindly provide correct details. 90% users ignore my message and they never respond, as the forum information is now freely accessible. Plus, majority are scammers and spammers.
Because of this now I have disable sign up and provide a email address they can reach out to for sign up, where I verify them and send a one person invite link to sign up.
It would be appreciated if instead of approved and delete user as an option in “must approve user” feature, if there was a option to respond, where we can communicate with this unverified user and then can as well share documents in pdf for evidence.
Do reach out if that’s something worth adding.
I don’t think it is a discourse problem. However, this is definitely a problem with the users entering wrong information to get access. I would suggest a different approach here.
Set up something like a google form where users are required to answer the questions that you are asking them upfront. Let them fill in those answers and submit a response.
Review these responses manually and send a one-time invite link to your community to the user so they could sign up.
Now, make a check box on signup page asking for their consent that if you find the information that they provided is incorrect. You will ban them without warning.
This is a good way to tackle the situation in my opinion
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There is the option to reject the user and send them an email saying why, if that’s any help?
It’s part of the delete user option.
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Thanks for the response but that was just one communication, there should availability of complete dialogue system for back and forth.
Thanks for the response.
I also thought of integrating my sign up with google form but felt made things more completed, just providing one email address for them to reach out to has created a dialogue for them and me to communicate and I am able to effectively verify everyone.
I don’t want to mistakenly threaten or ban a user who is actually genuine. All genuine users are very important people on my forum.
I think the intended flow is to give them the reasons why approval has not been granted and encourage them to sign up again, taking the feedback into consideration. I think it can work quite well if you give good feedback on what’s needed. Having a few templates handy can save a bit of time for that too.
I think you are right and it’s an ideal way to this.
But during sign up there is also a document that I ask them to share, for me to cross verify, which I can’t do through the original process.
I am also wondering if making sign up process this is difficult is a good idea or not.
Having robust secure sign up, is ensuring me with good verified, genuine users and prevent scammers but it takes time and end up discouraging impatient genuine users from sign up.
If anyone wants to comment on that, do share.
