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Wicked Annoying registration system
By adamg on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 11:58am
Rekha6 gets pulled into an infinite vortex of frustration when trying to get a new password to comment on a Wicked Local story about T fare increases.
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Comments
I tried to comment on a
I tried to comment on a science blog. I registered, got the email, clicked on the link back to the site, and it wouldn't accept my password and username. So I asked for a new password, got it by email, went back to the site, and was refused with the new password. Other people are posting - the blog just doesn't like me. Sometimes he's just not into you.
Wicked Local commenting
To Rekha6 and anyone else who has had difficulty registering to comment on a Wicked Local site:
The "commenting registration" (login with the comments at the end of a story) and the login to our Wicked Local People social networking site (login at the top of a Wicked Local page) are two different registration systems. Not ideal. Won't always be that way. But, while they are, we attempt to keep them separated on the page.
I'm guessing Rekha6's issue was with getting a commenting registration password and trying to use it on Wicked Local People. Please try again on the commenting login. If THAT doesn't work, please give us a call.
Anne
VP Audience Development
GateHouse Media New England
The registration issue
Thanks for responding to the flickr post and registration frustration. (I just traced back to this blog via flickr stats.) The separation between the two kinds of registration seemed pretty clear - even if, as you acknowledge, it's not ideal.
The problem I had was with the WickedLocal People registration. (See the description of what I did here.) It's happened before, but I haven't taken the trouble to mention it - I've just left the site.
While I understand the fear of the unregistered masses, WickedLocal is a rare and important local resource and could host more interesting comments and discussion than registration (esp non-functioning registration) allows.
Moderation does take more time and resources, but there are some good tools that make it easy. And you might find that bad comments aren't such a problem anyway. Maybe you have other reasons to require registration, but I'd encourage you to explore how to do away with it, or simplify the requirements. There's not a lot of good local reporting out there, and if you add to that the wealth of commentary you might get from the people in your coverage areas, you can end up with an even more valuable community resource than you already have.
Regards,
Rekha Murthy
Cambridge
Relevant link
Not surprisingly, other news sites are having the same challenges. You might find this blog post at PBS's MediaShift site interesting (great timing - was posted today!).