Require email verification new members

Do you require email verification for new registrations?

I recommend it - helps keep spammers away

Definitely, yes. I have been boards that have experienced a complete and total attack from spammers. They spread like a disease.

Yeah, you should always require email verification because it avoids a ton of hassles that would otherwise occur.

No, its a waste of time don't you think? People have to go to their email, verify it and it just wastes time in general, when you could be doing things like posting :)

Difinatly yes... Along with image verification

Whats image verification? Just a picture of yourself? If so, thats useless, you can just pull out a picture from google, saying oh thats me..

As for me, I like to post right away in forums and not keep on waiting for my email verification. It delays the time and our interest in posting.l

Whats image verification? Just a picture of yourself? If so, thats useless, you can just pull out a picture from google, saying oh thats me..

Image varification is an extra step to keep spammers off the board. It's numbers and letters you need to add in order to register. It really does help IMO.

I use it to prevent spammers or bots...

I use it to prevent spammers or bots...

When my board started up I didn't bother with email or image verification - as my site got more and more popular I started to get loads of spam posted by bots. As soon as I introduced both verifications they pretty much stopped. If you just have email verification then I found that the bots still got through.

So it's a big thumbs up from me!

Yep, I sure do.

I disabled it on my adult site. Because of what is perceived to be the nature of the site, most emails go straight to the bulk/trash bin, and we ended up with a ton of users awaiting email verification. Since they don't get the welcome email or pm til after they verify, sometimes they'd forget, and other times I was inundated with emails from "contact us" wanting to know why they couldn't post.
I turned it off after the first 2 months. It's been 10 months now without it, and no problems whatsoever.

you didn't said "knock on wood" so now you've jinxed it :p

nooooooooooooo Hell3, don't say that! *knocks on wood*

I use email notification, and I just started moderating new users, too. (I had some problems with trolls). The problem with the latter is that the user's name shows us as a New Member, even though they haven't officially been let into the site. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

I use email verification because it keeps bots away. Also, I want an accurate email address for newsletters, etc.

I think email verification should be the MINIMUM for slowing down auto-registrations and spammers. It's not just the annoyance factor - without it, you can be subject to the sort of DDoS attack that was launched by "Turkish Hackers" operating through theplanet.com on phpBB forums in the fall of 2004. They'd hit a site at a rate of several hundred auto-registrations an hour and crash the database or the server. At peak, they were hitting boards so rapidly that admins couldn't even sign on to disable the boards.

yes, i do...keeps the weirdos away....at least some of them :D