How come new registrants given "guest" rank and not even a "friend" rank?

[OldieHans]

A question to the admins:
I see that the new registrants are given the rank of "guest", and not even of "friend". Friend rank itself is useless since it cannot download any file attachments from the forum posts.

Sorry for being blunt, but it appears to me that the registration is open now from the past few days as a desperate means to keep the forum alive, with the new registrants given the "guest" rank: so that the whole bunch of the "guest" registrants can all be deleted in one go from time to time?

If one wants to maintain a healthy traffic for a forum, it is imperative that respect is shown to all the members. Even to new registrants.

The rules for subsequent promotions to ranks must be objective and should apply to all members equally.
One can see at a glance that some users with just 1-2 posts and that too very useless ones are shown as family or VIP rank while users who posted a lot of useful content do not get upvoted by entitled members and remain at a low rank...

Rank is not a big deal, except that once cannot download attachments and also get a penalty for request of re-up of the attached file to a public share...

If one cannot download attachments even after being a member for many years (with the admins claiming that they did not post anything useful), with a 100% subjective decision from the admins as to whether one's posts are useful or not, then it is no surprise that the forum will soon die.

Now to see if the admins would delete this post in a hurry or if they would actually answer it....

EDIT:
Tuts4you forum is also an equally charitable venture where Teddy pays everything from hosting to forum software costs out of his own pocket.
Posts from new registrants there are not censored or put aside for approval from admins before they are visible to the public.

By and large, we can see that the rate of spam posters on that tuts4you is very little to almost none, with just 1-2 spam every several months. Either that or excellent and timely moderation.

By requiring moderation for new registrants you are effectively starting out on the premise that "one is a spammer unless proved otherwise".
That is not exactly a very friendly approach.

It should be far easier to let new users post first, and then ban the bad apples.
Whether you let the posts be visible to users first or whether they need approval first, in either case the posts need to be read by the admins first!
It is a far stretch and outright unfriendly to new users to assume right from the start that they would register just to spam, and therefore to require approval from admins before their posts are visible to the public.

If the admins say that they are afraid of users registering just to attack or spam the forum, then that speaks volumes about the forum administration, because there are thousands of online forums where users can post as soon as they register without having to have their posts approved first!
Those forums are also charitable ventures in it that they are free and also, they do not have any significant spam problems necessitating the need for pre-moderation of the posts first!

[chessgod101]

As the forum has evolved through the past two decades, so has our contribution requirements for members to gain download privileges as well as for members to progress through the rankings. The guest user account is temporary and is simple solution to curtailing the influx of spam resulting from opening registration. It basically requires a moderator or administrator to approve a user's initial posts before they become visible to the public. Once we realize they aren't a spammer, you'll be switched to friend mode.

Exetools isn't monetized by ad revenue, meaning all expenses, including the bandwidth for downloads, comes out of the owner's pocket. Hence, this community is driven by passion, not profit. It is in that credence, we expect users to contribute to the knowledge and tool set just as they would benefit from it. In such a charitable community, there isn't an emphasis on user volume or popularity as much as there is an emphasis on the quality of the users.

[N0P]

20 years here and still can't download , WHAT IAM DOYING WRONG ?! :P joking

[ali56s]

Originally Posted by N0P

20 years here and still can't download , WHAT IAM DOYING WRONG ?! :P joking

hi i am from 2010 here and i can not ......
i am upset too
BR

[BlackWhite]

I'm here from 2013 and I cannot download, and I have once posted
a bug concerned Bochs which I believe is well worth winning a download
privilege.