I'm considering disabling all new registrations for the foreseeable future. What that will mean however is that anyone not currently a member wanting to download WAC will not be able to so so. Waalx has set the forums so that only registered members can view the related area and download and I'm not willing to change that without his permission.
However, I haven't heard from Waalx since before Christmas 2011 and the last time he logged in was on the 5th of May this year. I assume the forum and WAC are the furthest thing from his mind at the moment and I wish him well wherever he is. I will of course try to contact him, but if I don't hear anything within a couple of weeks from the date of this post I will go ahead and disable new registrations.
There is a WAC fix module that I have available on my Mediafire account which I'll leave there for the time being or as long as my account is active as I haven't used it in ages and I'm moving my files to another host when I get around to it.
At present the majority, if not all new registrations over the last few months and longer have been spambots. They have to pass a CAPTCHA to register so they are obviously have to be human to do that. Please see below re spambots.
I don't wish to close the forum altogether as it's still being utilized by myself and several current members and as long as they wish to stay on, I welcome them to do so. However, unless I do something like disabling new registrations the forum will be flooded with spammers. I will still be checking in, but perhaps only every few days or so instead of daily or several times a day as I have been, usually because of the spammers. I don't know yet.
There is the option of having to contact Admin when a new member registers to activate them, but I'm not interested in having a heap of emails, particularly from spam registrations in my inbox. That would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise.
However, if the possibility exists that genuine people who can't register still want access to WAC I will think about leaving a link to the download. This would go against Waalx wishes though and until he tells me otherwise I'm not really happy about doing that. I'll think about it.
The two most important reasons for doing this are these:
1. For quite some time now I've been part of a team creating a new Indie game using the Unreal 3 engine and things are getting to the stage where my involvement is going to take up more of my time. We're in pre-alpha stage now and things are really moving ahead.
2. There is no-one to take over maintenance of the forum if for some other reason I can't do it, for example if I lose internet, have an accident or some other reason. Waalx gave 'shingouki' Admin status for this reason but I spoke with 'shingouki' a few months ago and he doesn't wish to do it. I understand his reasons though. When Waalx asked me to be caretaker of the forum in his absence I had absolutely zero experience and had to do some heavy reading of the help files which for me are not very user friendly. That is not a complaint as I agreed to help out but, except for the basic day to day maintenance I'm not going to have the time or inclination to go through the docs for any other reason.
Then the lesser considerations from my point of view:
3. The above mentioned frequent spambots which is more of an annoyance than anything, but I'm not interested at this point in looking for other solutions like forum mods to try to curb them.
4. I no longer play Oblivion and cannot, and don't wish to offer support for WAC or the game in general. It's been over a year since I even loaded the game so I'm well behind what's happening on the Oblivion scene and I have no interest in it. I am grateful to the members who do offer support though and if they wish to continue they are certainly most welcome.
5. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing Skyrim as I've done almost all there is that interests me, but as new mods are released and particularly if and when new quests or world spaces come along that will probably change. Some exciting new games are on the horizon and I can see myself playing at least a couple of those for the foreseeable future.
I created a section to talk about new, and older games unrelated to The Elder Scrolls, so I will more than likely still use it myself.
Please comment if you're interested, otherwise I will go ahead and the forum will stay open to current members only.
Thank you for reading.
Maigrets
