We validate new membership requests by requiring that prospective members provide an email address, and that they respond using that address to our request for some background information. This system has been in place for some years now largely to guard against spambots.
This week we got hit with a flood of seemingly bogus requests (over 30) from a variety of domains, but mostly .ru and.xyz. All of the requests were made over short periods of time and have suspicious usernames, so I've rejected all of them rather than take the time to send over 30 emails when I do not believe I will receive a response.
However, it is possible that among the bogus applications there were one or more legitimate requests.
If you have submitted an application for membership this week and have not hear back from us, please try again.
Spamming operations like we experienced this week are unusual if not rare these days, so I expect that your application will be viewed as legitimate the next time around.
Thanks,
Jamie (administrator)