[Discuss] Turn offs

[psymann]

Tom Vogt wrote:
> Am 08.05.2008 um 17:39 schrieb Andrew Asche:
>> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Tom Vogt <tom at lemuria.org> wrote:
>>> You need a valid e-mail address virtually _everywhere_ on the
>>> Internet. If you don't have one by now, it's high time to create one.
>>
>> They're not talking about not having an email address at all.  They're
>> talking about the fact that you can't register on BM with a Yahoo (Or
>> Hotmail, I think) email.
> 
> 
> So? Move to a non-spam provider and you're fine.

I've had a hotmail account for about 11 years now.  I know that it's 
only annoying hotmail, but it also has many benefits that cause me to 
keep using it.

If you want to disallow hotmail addresses for the reasons you give in 
the registration text (ie because "There have been way too many abusers, 
cheaters and other troublemakers from that service.") then that's fine.

But do understand that it will cause a loss of some potential players.

For some people, creating a new e-mail address is not trivial, and they 
may not actually be able to create a new address specially even if they 
wanted to.

And other people, as mentioned by others in this thread, may well not 
bother.  The extra hassle of getting a new e-mail address may be all it 
takes for me to sack it off as a bad job and find a different game to try.

I'm sure it will put people off - I still remember the fact that hotmail 
wasn't allowed, and the irritation that caused when I had to faff around 
just to use my other e-mail address that was already set up - let alone 
create one specially.

If you don't care about the lost playerbase this causes, then fine.  But 
I think the intention of the original post was to advise you of the lost 
players in case you wanted to do something about it - and because we 
like to have new players in the game too.  I can think of very few other 
sites that disallow hotmail accounts (and none in the last five years or 
so; hotmail used to be frowned upon more in the past, I found).

I don't know how much of the rejection of hotmail accounts is based on 
an actual problem, and how much is just based on your personal hatred of 
hotmail/yahoo.  Some of your hatreds I can agree with - I've tried 
changing my browser from Internet Explorer to Opera, and liked the 
change.  But others of your hatreds I don't agree with - I still find 
this discussion list less good than either a decent forum or even a 
newsgroup.  If it really is a true problem with hotmail, then maybe a 
few things could help to avoid putting off new players, whether it's 
easy step-by-step instructions on how to get an 'acceptable' e-mail 
address, or an apology that it's your (justifyable) inability to be able 
to deal with spam/cheaters/abusers that means hotmail has to be 
blanket-banned, or something else to encourage players to make that new 
account.  Also, I believe you can later set your e-mail address to be 
hotmail, as long as the actual signing-up is done with something else, 
and making a note of that may also be useful information for people who 
then realise they only need to make the new e-mail once and can then 
reset to hotmail and forget about the one they made, so won't have to 
start remembering more URLs and passwords for this other e-mail.

psymann