A few of you may have encountered some unintended problems with this website lately.

Some time ago, I started automatically expiring inactive accounts. This was to weed out the stupendous number of spam registrations that this site gets (most of which don't result in anything happening).

More recently, I made it much more difficult to register for an account in the first place. This was to combat the same problem, especially because the number of spammers who were manually posting spam was on the rise.

These two policies are obviously redundant.

I then promptly disappeared for over a month, and was unable to process new registrations or deal with expired accounts. Great planning, I know.

For now, I am turning off automatic account expiration. Also, a much newer and better version of the software underlying this website is almost ready for prime time, and I hope to transition to that as quickly as possible. Some of the custom features I've had coded for this site will go away (unless I hire another programmer), but I get the impression they weren't used much anyhow.

Transitioning to the newer software will, unfortunately, require that everyone with an account sign up anew (I've got some ideas for dealing with spam registration more elegantly); it will also require that the "useful links" be re-entered by hand. If you would like to be a Hero of the Republic and take on a chunk of this re-entry work, contact me and I'll allocate a chunk to you. I expect the transition to happen in mid-November.