Heh. Not really. Don't be silly.

It's been 3 years, 1 month since registration broke, viz. the 'work around' method of claiming that you 'forgot' your password. Registration proper broke well before that.

For a time I thought that having a 'closed community' was actually a good thing, since it prevented the nutters and Dogz spin-offs infecting our space. But the special volume of crap that Dogz produced was the product of a very ill mind; TW worked pretty well before that.

Evan, ever beneficent and ever merciful, appears generous enough to keep TW running for the sake of its users, as a place where they can occasionally reunite. However, there becomes a point where board activity is so low that the frequency of users' visits diminishes: if there are no incentives for people to return, they naturally move on. In other words, to keep TW alive as a meeting place, it may be necessary to open its doors again.

As it stands, the board languishes in a kind of Terri Schiavo-vegetation, neither quite alive nor dead, with the promise of a similar seven-year court case, in which Dogz wrangles for the ownership rights.


A couple of practical concerns:

1) Evan is a very busy man with big responsibilities: the reports of numerous superhuman feats of his rescuing of babies from blazing car wreckages, etc. are well-documented on the board. I know nothing of the mechanics of TW's registration process, but I guess it would require a couple of hours work at the most. This level of attention over a three year period isn't that demanding.

2) Much generic message board software nowadays uses Captcha or similar to prevent spammers infiltrating the forum. I am not sure, however, if this would be a concern for TW because a) I think the particular board software TW uses is not that popular (IIRC), b) board registration is bizarrely interlinked with the main site. I don't know if these points would deflect spammers or not. If not, obviously much more work would be involved and I understand the reluctance to fix it.