Hi,

I just registered to the KDE forum compelled by a really annoying new feature that I failed to disable.

The registration process was excruciating and took way more time than reasonable: over 15 minutes of trial and error to reverse engineer why the automatic spammer protection was triggered.

When I figured that it required that I give away my privacy to google, the "I'm not a robot please click these images" took about 2 minutes to complete and then I got served the same automatic spammer detection 403 error, now I had to restart the whole process a few times but it took minutes each time instead of second.

After trying different combination of browsers, settings and email addresses I eventually managed to go through the registration process, but I went from mildly annoyed to really angry at KDE. Please fix this ****, alienating and infuriating users in need of support is probably not a good idea to start with.

i second this!

I wanted to create a topic because of this, but I just noticed this here so I agree with you.

I have been using phpbb webforums in various ways for ... I think ... about 15 years or so.

And I can honestly say that the KDE webforum is probably among the top 5 of the most annoying webforums ever.

Others were also annoying but ... wow, KDE team. What has gotten into your mind?

So...

- The registration process thought I was a bot. No idea why, perhaps because I clicked on the "I am not a robot" checkbox
too quickly before hitting next. I have to hit next because the registration is so annoying! And I have no patience for
1000 questions! What happened to simplicity? When was it lost?

But anyway, after the pointless message said "auto-detect spam", stupid as the code most likely is, I went back and patiently
waited. But suddenly, boring images pop up of ... cars! Now I have to solve TWO puzzles. "Click on the car in the square"
or something. Now, actually ... that puzzle is not so bad. It was actually funny. But the very FACT that I have to invest time
AND NOW ALSO HAVE TO WRITE THIS HERE, is ... annoying.

So please, KDE forum people - use your brain. People WANT TO WRITE STUFF or ASK QUESTIONS. They do not want to
struggle with a registration wall that annoys them to no ends.

- I managed to overcome this hurdle but there also was some pointless checkbox aka "you must accept the CoC". What
do I care about any arbitrary, random CoC? At which point did this insanity infiltrate the mindset of people who pester
others with this boring, pointless stuff? If you want to enforce whatever you want to, be it the killing of cats or anarchy
OR I DO NOT CARE. I don't tell you about MY philosophy either, so why do you try to tell me about yours? I am not
interested in it and others are not either. However had, I still have a useful proposal in this regards - if you really, for some
god-forsaken reason think that you must wave about any random CoC to make your ego feel at warmth, THEN PLEASE
DO NOT MAKE IT AS PART OF THE REGISTATION PROCESS ITSELF.

I still don't care about CoCs and you can happily abuse peopl who disagree with it by removing their accounts - or you can
man up, become mature rather than kindergarten bosses and accept dissenting opinions too, but please, for the love of
our lifetime here - MAKE THE REGISTRATION PURPOSE SIMPLER.

Why do you require of people to HAVE TO CLICK ON A BUTTON? Do you think that clicking on any button is "legally binding"?
Seriously? It's just a pointless distraction. Actually, this all here takes me way longer than what I wanted to ask ... and I remember
that the kde forum in the old days, wasn't anywhere near as annoying.

But anyway, if you really insist on trying to educate the world with whatever random CoC nobody cares about, then please,
don't make it a button - MAKE IT SOME DISPLAY as part of the registration purpose rather than a factory line in the
factory-build-up-process to register an account here. You can compare the IPs and I am sure you can find out that the
above comments were not from me, so - there you go. I just give more feedback.

The advantage would be that people do not have to click on anything and could just continue - saves a bit time for everyone.
And if people want to mindlessly click on buttons, I suggest to add a web-game where they can click on buttons, like
forums.kde.org/happy_click URL.

The annoyance is not yet over though.

- When I continued to fight through this very annoying process, there was a "choose your name" ... but there were only
4 choices. I did not want to pick any of them. In hindsight I guess it was for the main account, rather than the nick,
but the thing is ... I already do not care about the "name of the account". I could choose the name for the account here
on the webforum, which is GOOD. I do not want to have to care about the rest, so why are you bothering people with
it? By the way, if you have sensible "preferences" settings, than rather than telling people that they must pick something,
you could simply tell them that they can choose stuff at PREFERENCES when they want to. But no ... I had to pick one
of the four mandatory entries. I already forgot what I picked because I don't care but really, this question is so totally
unnecessary.

- Also, by the way, the webforum loads VERY slowly, which is atypical for phpbb. I assume it is because the webforum does
a lot of useless things. It would be better to radically simplify it, but I guess whoever makes the decision loves to
have lots of stuff. I for one only really care about simple forum styles and simple communication, just as it was in
the oldschool days (2002 to 2010 or so).

- Last but not least, the best advice I can give is to SIMPLIFY THE WHOLE PROCESS. It is too complicated, too annoying
and way too convoluted. phpBB forums can be great, I have no idea why you chose to make that particular forum
worse than it ought to be. Actually, I think that the default values for the phpBB forum would beat this customization
hands down.

The registration process create so much friction that it seems designed to prevent people from registering or to make sure they are angry by the time they registered.

I wonder what kind of convoluted decision process could have lead to implementing such a thing or even to consider this to be a good idea in the first place. At least it is not a javascript only infinite scrolling kind of forum so there's that.