dotProject

Okay, 'fess up. Who is running the "daft act guaranteed to drive an admin barking mad in 10 seconds" competition? It's got to be organised. There's no other way to explain the way that these acts happen in blocks.

This Week's act of bastardry is all about spam filters.

When you wander off to a forum and join it and the last message you get is that you'll be getting an email from us so that you can validate your account, as I see it you've got two choices.

You could open up your spam filters to email from dotproject.net and, receive the email.

Or you could wait for a few days, then whinge at me about the fact that you can't post. Please, just send me your version of the "WHY DOESN'T MY ACCOUNT EXIST [expletive of your choice]" demand and I'll leap to and send you back my suggestion which is worded something along the lines of:

Have you validated your account via the email that was automatically sent to you?

Of course you have no idea how thrilling it is to realise that, after taking the time to respond to your message in the first place, I then have to dance a dance, whisper the secret password and promise to go to bed early with my teeth and hair nicely brushed just to get my email through your spam filter. (The interesting thing here is that I'm answering your email, which you sent me through no impetus of my own. Doesn't this make your first message spam, in which case asking for me to authorise a response to your spam through your own spam filters, and then sending me spam to say that you've considered my request not to be flagged as a potential spammer.... okay now I feel dizzy).

All in all, it results in:

a) you not being able to post anything.

AND

b) me getting as wild as a cut snake because, I know you all find this hard to believe, but I've got other things I'd like to do with my life. (You can just see the depths of my dilemma, play with your spam filters, write the Files Module documentation.... spam filters.... documentation.... spam filters.... documentation....... neither...... is that the bar fridge I hear opening....).

So my all means ask me to fix the unfixable for you, because at the bottom of all of this idiocy is the fact that I can do nothing about it.

The bulletin board software asks you to verify your account to ensure that you are a real person when you create your account - this is to prevent spammers ironically enough.

You then ask this automated system to confirm it's a real person before you'll receive its email. It's not. It's a bulletin board, or a bug reporting board, or a marketplace or whatever......

Nobody reads bounce back messages to the bulletin board software, because, well, there's paint drying somewhere in this world and frankly that's a show that you could take a date to.

Perhaps you'd like to ask me to respond to your spam filter again this week (I'm up around 50 or so of these sorts of emails in the last few days). You'd better hope like hell you're not the lucky punter who hits the magical number this week and my head spins and I become..... slightly miffed.