ICC News Item #1320

NEWS 1320 (23-Feb-00)
New Registration and Free Trial System

Registrations on Chessclub.com will all be handled through a new
registration page:

              http://www.chessclub.com/register

We have also made substantial changes to the free trial system.  Our
goal in the design of the free trial system has always been to give
everyone just one free trial.  The old system (in use before today)
gave a one-week free trial to each unique email address.  In order to
prevent rampant multiple free trials, we did not offer free trials for
email addresses such as hotmail and yahoo, which allow anybody to
create as many addresses as they want.

This system had some serious drawbacks.  It excluded many people from
getting the free trials they deserved, while at the same time allowing
others to get many free trials.  The new system, while not perfect,
gets much closer to our design goal.  We feel that this change
represents a big improvement.  It will eliminate many people who hurt
the club by, for example, using offensive language, harrassing others,
disconnecting in lost positions, cheating, artifically inflating their
ratings, and wasting a lot of our time doing police work instead of
improving the club.

The new system gives out free trials on a per computer basis.  (The
email address is no longer used at all.)  Roughly speaking, each
computer can be used for two free trials.  Once a free trial account
pays a membership fee, the computer(s) used will be eligible for
another free trial.

BlitzIn has a feature that identifies the computer on which it's
running.  The Chessclub.com server then keeps track of how many free
trials have been used by that computer.  (This identification can also
be used to block access to Chessclub.com by people who have a record
of bad behavior.)

Currently, only people using a recent BlitzIn will be able able to get
a free trial.  Paying members and guests will still be able to use any
interface.

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