Anyone know what's up over at FPN?

[FGarbrecht]

Since I've gotten interested in fountain pens I've tried to register over at Fountain Pen Network. I'm not getting response to registration requests nor to direct emails to their admin email address. Anyone here have access and know what the deal is? As it is, as a non-registered lurker I can't even post over there to ask what the problem is.

 

[monophoto]

About a year ago, the site administrators posted an announcement of a change in their registration procedures that involve 'background checks' on e-mail addresses. They noted that this process can take as much as a week! It may be that your address triggered some kind of negative flag.

FPN is based in Europe, so the administrators may not march to the same drummer as those of us in the colonies.

I suggest trying to contact them again.

 

[FGarbrecht]

About a year ago, the site administrators posted an announcement of a change in their registration procedures that involve 'background checks' on e-mail addresses. They noted that this process can take as much as a week! It may be that your address triggered some kind of negative flag.

FPN is based in Europe, so the administrators may not march to the same drummer as those of us in the colonies.

I suggest trying to contact them again.

Thanks, I'll give it another shot. I've followed their updated registration procedure twice, maybe 3rd time will be a charm.

 

[Dalecamino]

You might try to contact Shawn Newton, (Watch_Art on IAP) He was a moderator on FPN
Here's his website https://newtonpens.com/

 

[1shootist]

You're not alone, I've been waiting too. I had forgotten about it till your post.

 

[Don Rabchenuk]

I just went to the create an account page and this is what it says.
"The administrator is currently not accepting new membership registrations. "

 

[monophoto]

I just went to the create an account page and this is what it says.
"The administrator is currently not accepting new membership registrations. "

I found a more recent post from the administrator about the problem. Apparently, FPN has been the target for a lot of robot spammers, and to protect themselves, they have had to resort to manual validation - the automatic schemes such as CAPTCHA aren't very effective. The administrator noted that his day job involves traveling most of the week, so he can only work on the site on weekends. As a result, they have a problem validating new membership registrations.

You can lurk on the site without registration. As a workaround, I would be happy to post questions for IAP members who are unable to post questions on FPN.

By the way - I've noticed that Firefox has evolved in a way that is presenting a number of problems. One of the most troublesome is that it does not always display the CAPTCHA log-in validation app. For the last several months, if I have had a need to access a site with CAPTCHA verification, I have had to use a different browser. That probably doesn't explain the problem at FPN because they appear to have concluded that CAPTCHA is not reliable, but it could be a problem on other sites.