Proposed Terms of Service Addition:: Valid Email Requirement: Open for Comment Until Jan. 17, 2013

[dawn_felagund]

My comoderators and I have been discussing an addition to our site's Terms of Service that would require a valid email address upon registration for the archive and any future services (gallery, blog, etc.). At present, while you are required to enter an email address when you register, that address does not need to point to an actual email account. The proposed addition is under the first cut. Under the second cut, you can read the accompanying FAQ entry, which explains the policy in greater detail.

This proposed change is open for comment by members and visitors to the SWG until January 17, 2013. Please feel free to comment here with any suggestions, concerns, or questions, or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.

Assuming that we decide to go ahead with this proposed addition, we will also need translators to translate the new section (only the ToS change, not the new FAQ) into German, Polish, Russian, Finnish, and Swedish. (If you speak a language not on that list and wish to help us make our ToS available in that language, we are always looking for ToS translators!) If you're interested, please comment here or drop us an email.

Proposed Terms of Service Addition

Full SWG Terms of Service can be found here.

8. Upon registering with our archive or any future site features that the SWG might offer, members will be expected to provide a valid email address. If an email address is found to be invalid, the account will be locked, and the member can contact the moderation team to have the account unlocked and email address updated. In the instance of mass registrations of invalid email addresses that do not appear to be intended for legitimate use of the site, or other suspicious activity, the SWG moderators reserve the right to delete these accounts. An account with any legitimate past or present activity (including but not limited to entry of information into the bio page, review activity, posting stories or podfics, or creating a Favorites list) will never be deleted under this rule.

New FAQ: What should I do if I forget my login or password? What should I do if the site won't allow me to register with my email address? What are the SWG's requirements for valid email addresses?

Forgotten Password or Login Information

If you remember the email address that you used to register for your account, you can use the Lost Password link on the login screen. You will be prompted to enter your email address, and an email will be sent to that address with a new password. New passwords are automatically generated by the site, so you should receive a new password within a few minutes of making your request. If you do not, please contact the moderation team at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org, and we will manually reset your password for you. We will not share our members' email addresses with any outside groups or individuals or use them for purposes other than official site business.

It can also happen that the newly generated password will not work. If this happens, do contact our moderation team immediately.

If you do not remember the email address that you used to create your account, then you will need to contact the moderation team for assistance at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. Please remember that we are an all-volunteer group, and it may take us up to a day to respond, although we generally have much quicker response times. If you don't hear from a moderator within 24 hours, please feel free to query.

Please do not create multiple accounts if you forget your login or password information or have trouble retrieving this information. Please contact the mods, and we will resolve the issue for you.

Email Not Accepted at Registration

On rare occasions, our site's email address validator has rejected legitimate email addresses and will not allow an account to be set up with that email address. If you attempt to register, and the archive will not accept your email address, please contact us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We will set up your account for you with your preferred email address. Please remember that we are an all-volunteer group, and it may take us up to a day to respond, although we generally have much quicker response times. If you don't hear from a moderator within 24 hours, please feel free to query.

Requirements for a Valid Email Address at Registration

As of DATE, the SWG Terms of Service require a valid email address when registering for our archive or any other site services that we might offer.

Why do we require a valid email address? Unfortunately, sites like ours are open to abuse by individuals that want to use them for spam and other purposes that range from annoying to dangerous. The SWG has been attacked by spammers in the past, and for the comfort and online safety of our members, we hope to minimize future instances of this.

Requiring valid email addresses is one way that we can detect and eliminate spammers before they cause problems. For example, if we discover ten new registrations from invalid email addresses under usernames with no connection to Tolkien fandom and no account activity, we can lock and remove those accounts before they can be used to do damage.

Our moderators also need to contact members on rare occasions about site-related business. A valid email address ensures that we can get in touch with you, if needed. We will never contact you unless absolutely necessary, and we will not share your registration information with anyone beyond the moderation team of our group without your permission.

What action will we take against accounts without valid email addresses? First of all, we are not looking to lock or remove accounts. We do not intend to check new or old registered emails for validity. We will take action only when 1) an email address is revealed to be invalid during the course of normal site business or 2) when an invalid email address is registered as part of suspicious activity that appears unrelated to legitimate use of the site.

Normal site business that requires us to contact members tends to be to address minor issues, such as fixing HTML coding errors in a story or responding to a flag on a story for a new character. If we discover that your registered email account is not functioning correctly--such as if an email to you bounces--then we will lock your account, and you will need to contact us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org to have the account unlocked. A locked account does not mean that you're in trouble; it is simply a means for us to let you know that we need to get in touch with you. We understand that there are many reasons why an email account might bounce or might not work as expected.

In rare instances, we reserve the right to delete accounts entirely. If an account with an invalid email is registered as part of suspicious activity, there is no indication that the account is intended for legitimate purposes, and there is no activity on the account, then we may remove the account entirely. This is admittedly a judgment call on the part of the moderators. For example, if we receive five registrations in one hour from accounts composed of random strings of letters (e.g., ADGDNI) with invalid email accounts and no attempt to create an identity on our site (such as by entering biographical information or using other site features), then we may choose to remove these accounts from our system altogether. We will always give the benefit of the doubt to the user, however, and will lock rather than delete accounts whenever there appears to be even a shred of a possibility that the account is legitimate. For example, an account registered under the name GreyElf is likely legitimate, as is an account that links to a LiveJournal or other non-spam website. As noted above, there are valid reasons why an email to a member might bounce, why there might be a block of registrations in a short time, and why there might be multiple registrations from a single IP.

Under no circumstances will we delete an account that has present or past activity, including but not limited to entering non-spam data in the bio form, leaving reviews, posting stories or podfics, or creating a Favorites list, unless that member is in violation of site policies as outlined in our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service.

For all issues or questions concerning registration, passwords, and emails, we encourage our members to contact the moderators at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We are happy to assist.

Comments

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Do you want Italian?

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, that would be wonderful! :D All we need is the ToS: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/join.php#tos

If you get a chance to do it, just email it to me, and I will get it added to the site. :)

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

It isn't urgent, is it? The thing is, I don't speak Italian that good, I meant to ask a friend, but I wouldn't want to put pressure on her. Is the end of next week ok?

[dawn_felagund]

Goodness no, it isn't urgent at all! :) We've gone this many years without it, so we can go a few more. ;) If it ends up being more than a few weeks, just check back with me to make sure someone else hasn't done it before your friend starts on it. And if your friend can't do it, that's no big deal. We just want to be as internationally friendly as possible, and encountering legalese in one's native language is bad enough, much less trying to puzzle out Terms of Service in one's second, third, etc. language.

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

I hope it will be over in 10 or 15 days. ;)

[dawn_felagund]

That sounds good! If you need anything, please let me know. :)

[dreamflower]

Sounds very reasonable to me, though I'm not often on at SWG.

Should we do the same at MPTT? Sounds like a good way to squash spammers.

[dawn_felagund]

I don't think it can hurt. It's an added layer of protection against spammers, imo.

[independence1776]

I don't see a problem with that (and am in fact surprised it wasn't already a requirement).

[dawn_felagund]

So were we! ;) It's one of those things that I would have definitely included if I'd written the ToS with more experience than the ... well, nothing that I had when I wrote our SE/ToS! :D And it's sort of implicit since the archive requires an email and even does a buggy and not very good check that the address looks legit, but with spam issues striking eFiction sites of late, we thought it best to officially clarify how we'd handle the different situations that could arise.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

It sounds a sensible idea.I'm in favour.

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks for commenting on this, Linda! :)

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Especially given the recent deluge of spam on LJ, this sounds like a very good idea. I'll tackle the translation into German again, if you'd like me to.

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks, Elleth! That would be awesome.

[hhimring]

I suppose it could put off someone from registering, just very occasionally, if they are very worried about their anonymity, but most people nowadays don't think twice about setting up a separate email account for a special purpose if they need one.
And also it is pretty much standard, isn't it--or at any rate lots of sites require a valid email address nowadays.
And you do need a way to fight spammers.

[dawn_felagund]

Many sites send an email to the registered account that has an activation link; our software doesn't do this, but it's kind of our work-around so that we can actually get in touch with the people who are using our site. :)

I might add a bit into the FAQ about setting up a "fandom only" email account. I don't blame people for not wanting to use their RL identity; I'm always surprised at the number of people who use their real names when registering on the site. Thanks for the suggestion! :)

[scarlet1061.livejournal.com]

I must admit I am not happy with this change.
I am one who values privacy very strongly, and this is just a first step, in a long way.

I have seen some places which require "valid email address" to actually be only a Gmail one.

Not happy, sorry.

[dawn_felagund]

Scarlet, how you currently have your SWG account set up is perfectly acceptable under this rule. Your account points to a valid email address--I know this because I've used this email address several times in the past few days! :)

A "valid email address" doesn't mean "an email address under your real name." It certainly doesn't require a Gmail account. It just requires that, if we have to email you about something on the site, our email actually reach a working account. You don't even have to check the account it points to.

This is not a "first step" toward anything. We're not attempting to extract information from people that they don't want to give; we're simply asking that, if you use our site, we have a way to get in touch with you if we need to. It is adding something to our ToS that, honestly, I thought was in there but wasn't because I was a total newbie when I wrote the ToS, and the thought didn't cross my mind then to add it. For the vast majority of people, this rule changes nothing about how they will use the site. It does, however, give us the ability to limit how people who register under a bad email like asdgladsgniadsngs@yahoo.com can do damage to the site for those using it legitimately.

[parmalokwen.livejournal.com]

I spent half a year administering a website with a forum for a school club once, which was inundated with spammers when I took it over and required a software upgrade to enact new security measures. Requiring a valid email address by your TOS is only half the battle-- while it gives you a handy excuse to boot suspected spam accounts, it still requires your active involvement to do so. If your website becomes widely known to spammers (I suspect there are lists being sold) as one that is vulnerable to robo-registration, you're going to have a real nuisance on your hands, on the order of dozens of new spam accounts per day. (In my experience, not all Captchas are created equal--some are vulnerable to image-recognition programs. I don't know how good yours is.) I highly recommend those activation emails.

[dawn_felagund]

Our site has been in existence for more than five years now. We've been lucky to have relatively few problems with spammers, but it has happened, as I think is probably the case with any site that allows community participation. We use eFiction software, and the spam problems we have are occurring on other eFiction sites, so I suspect, as you do, that there are lists or other ways to sleuth out which sites are running eFiction. At present, we have CAPTCHA enabled, and I monitor the site at least once per day, with my comods popping in periodically as well. We're also bolstered by being a small and close-knit community, so if something doesn't look right, someone will spot it and report it to us within a couple of hours. Since all of us mods monitor the site's email account and we span several European and U.S. timezones, we typically have issues resolved within a couple of hours--sometimes a couple of minutes! :)

The confirmation email would be ideal, I agree. It's unfortunately not a reality for us unless our software developer decides to offer it (eFiction version 4 is in beta-testing at present), as I don't know that any of us have the level of coding experience to add that on our own.

The lack of requirement for a valid email is something that only recently came to my attention, while working on an issue unrelated to spam. I wrote the ToS for our site years ago, when I was new at this and not sure what to include. Were I to write the ToS from scratch today, I'm sure I would include it; imo, it's not asking a lot that we be able to get in touch with the people who are using our site. As my comods and I talked about it, it seemed a minimally intrusive requirement--it's somewhat implicit already, as eFiction makes an attempt to verify that an email looks legit during the account-creation process--and a way to be transparent about how we will handle suspicious account activity, in the instance that this arises.

[grey_gazania]

Sounds like a perfectly sensible addition. :)

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks for the input, GG! :)

[adlanth.livejournal.com]

I think I could translate the TOS into French, if you're interested...?

[dawn_felagund]

We'd be very interested! :D Here's a direct link to just the ToS: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/join.php#tos

Thank you. :)

[engarian.livejournal.com]

It seems totally reasonable to me, and no different than requirements on other websites and groups that I am a member of. Go for it!

- Erulisse (one L)

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, I was actually surprised that it wasn't already part of our ToS! :) I blame my extreme newbieness at the time of writing, the SWG being my first site. Thanks for sharing your opinion on it.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

It seems like a no-brainer to me.

[dawn_felagund]

If experienced-mod!Dawn were to write the ToS today, it would be in there for sure. :) Thanks for sharing your opinion!

[binkaslibrary.livejournal.com]

I kind of thought it was already required. Heh ;)

Anyway, I'll add to the Polish version of the ToS asap. If no one else wants to add ot the Russian one, I'll try to do that, too, though it may take a while.

[dawn_felagund]

That's great, Binka, thank you! :) Did you do the original Russian version? I seemed to recall that you did, but that was a while ago, so I might be mistaken. I don't know if we have anyone else, but if I hear from someone who wants to take it on, I'll let you know.

[binkaslibrary.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did that version, in the Years of the Trees... ;)

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

The one thing that gives me pause is your use of the word "valid." It's a little ambiguous, and I can see people with Scarlet's concern about privacy thinking that valid implied a value judgment of some kind: if your email was deemed "invalid," that might seem more personal somehow.

I wonder if functional might be a better word choice? It seems to have a less subjective meaning, at least to my concussion-addled brain.

[dawn_felagund]

Good point. I have no problem swapping "valid" for "functional" or, even to simplify further, "working." :) I'll make sure I bring this up to my comods when we talk about the final version. Thanks, Marta!

[elfscribe5.livejournal.com]

Sounds okay to me. I'm wondering, if we're already members, do we need to add an email address? I can't remember if I did that or not.

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, an email address is required at registration. The change in ToS would only require it to be a real one! :)