Does anyone know how to contact the Practical Backpacking guy? I looked all over the forum and netcast site but could not find anything.

I would post on the forum but cannot register with the use of a Yahoo email. He wants people to use their ISP email, which I do not have. I am not about to give out my work email as this is for work. I have never heard of such an asinine rule for a forum, and I belong to many.

I'm in the same boat as you are, I use gmail exclusively so I cannot join!

A lot more sites are starting to do this, because of the amount of questionable email that comes from gmail, yahoo, and other free services.

What you may be able to do is to find one of the smaller free email services that is not as conspicious as the larger and go from there.

Or, maybe backpacking light is willing to start selling email services to members?

MikeB

I know the forum owner personally. He is strict about keeping his site free of "riff raffs" (my term) and non-backpacking related chatter. The ISP rule is there by design.

Now, it's not my rule to defend or attack -- but my thoughts are that if you believe his rule is asinine (your term), then you shouldn't join. After all, there are dozens and dozens of other forums out there.

Edited by ben2world on 08/27/2007 01:30:52 MDT.

Almost all of the tech forums I participate on have the same rule. Its for the reasons that Mike mentioned, its easy for spammers to set up a Hotmail or Yahoo account and go to town. I'm sure your ISP provides you with a free email address or five, so just set one of those up to field the emails and you should be set. The only email I've gotten from Practical Backpacking is the confirmation that my account was active so its not like you're getting tons of emails from it anyway.

Adam

Edited by aroth87 on 08/27/2007 07:24:53 MDT.

His name is Bernie something. He sits at his computer all day long changing peoples posts, because he is strict about how pretty your post is. His screenname is reality so you could send him a pm.

Edited by jshann on 08/27/2007 19:19:08 MDT.

I understand this "feature" was implemented by design. And I would love to send him a PM but I cannot sign up. Why would I want to go get another email because of one forum? I want to sign up because I think he has put together some great netcasts and seems like a good forum is being started. I also want to read and respond to a thread about the Go-Lite interview.

I am a member of at least 15 different forums and none of them have a problem with my Yahoo email. And none of them seem to suffer from spammers.

Plain and simple this seems like a very unreasonable rule, but from what I can tell already Bernie probably doesn't really care.

"Matt" after reading your post I thought of this comic:



So, yes, you could just directly paste a URL in your reply when an embedded link is considered better form, just beware the raptors if you do.

Adam

Edited by aroth87 on 08/27/2007 11:35:13 MDT.

Ben, when the heck did he start that? I don't even have an ISP email address. I use ALL web based email accounts. Never had an email address based on my ISP...we change to often ;-P

My guess is that anyone could sign on at first -- but soon after, folks were signing on with multiple handles -- causing Bernie to tighten up the process and requiring ISP addresses.

Edited by ben2world on 08/27/2007 12:42:08 MDT.

Once you sign up you can freely change your email address that PBF will use to send you emails (which is very few). I don't know what your work email rules are, but you might be able to sign up with it and immediately change it to your yahoo account.

I understand that PBF has ruffled a few feathers with the way it is set up, but it really does create content rich site without a lot of superfluous posts to sift through to find info you need. I have personally talked with the admin, and you wouldn't believe that amount of spam that he has to deal with that the average poster doesn't see. PBF is a great forum, and I will continue to make it the primary forum that I use.

I know I was an early member to sign up, but I had no problem with my yahoo e-mail. Try it. The worst that can happen is it won't let you.

Hi Brian,
I'm a moderator at Practical Backpacking and will email Bernie about this issue. As far as I know, you should be able to still register with your Yahoo account but will double check and get back to you.

IIRC, I signed up with my Hotmail account. But that was a little over a year ago, so things have probably changed.
As for whether or not its worth its to get another email address to sign up, that's entirely up to you. I personally enjoy PBF but I'll admit its not for everyone. I remember lots of discussions on Whiteblaze about how PBF would never make it and how it is run as a dictatorship. If that's how you feel there are plenty of other forums that are probably more to your liking. No one is forcing you to participate on PBF, here, or any other forum. If you go in with an open mind, knowing that PBF is a little different than you are used to, you will probably enjoy PBF, just as many others do.

Adam

hmm, i went over and reactivated my account today, then in the "Gear Workshop" forum i posted a link to pictures of my homemade quilts. now my post has disappeared. i assume it was removed, but i received no explanation of why, or even any notice that it was removed.

PBF continues to underwhelm me. reckon i'm just not the kind of user they want there.

I like the content over at PB but I can't stand all of the nanny like features. No thanks for me.

.

Edited by Dondo on 08/27/2007 19:14:09 MDT.

.

Thanks for all the comments folks. Yes I realize there are other forums out there and no one is forcing me to use PBF. However the netcasts seem really good so I figured I should give it a try. I'm going to see what I can do to make it work and try for myself.

I must admit I am not going in with an open mind. I really don't like multiple comments about a moderator editing my posts. And I'm already irritated about the draconian email rules due to spam issues. Face it spam happens.

"i posted a link to pictures of my homemade quilts. now my post has disappeared. i assume it was removed,"

Reality is pretty quick to pull a link if you post it as a URL. Just insure you use the icon and basically make it look pretty. If you link to anything he deems "off-topic", it goes away quickly. It's too bad because some of the best threads I've read on other forums came from a minor thread drift. Granted, that was the exception, oh well.

I still regularly visit PBF because I enjoy mix of styles and ideas that take place there. (And yes, I've had posts pulled before. Looking back I realized I had drifted off-topic, and reposted in way that kept the thread on-topic and the post stayed.)