"I received a Spambot Registration Attempt message when I tried to register."
This will happen any time you include any information on the registration form under the heading "Profile Information" (the section with the fields for signature, ICQ number, WWW page, etc.). When registering DO NOT fill out any of this section! It can be changed or updated once you have registered. Follow the instructions on the registration form, in particular those with a red background and you should be fine.
"I never got my registration notice and my account disappeared. What happened?"
There could be several reasons for this. When you create an account here you are sent a validation e-mail with a link to activate your account. If you did not receive it for some reason (see below) and the account was not validated within 24 hours the un-activated account is deleted assuming it was not possible to activate it. The best bet here is to activate your account as soon as you receive the validation e-mail. If you did not receive it, make sure you check your spam/junk folder and can receive mail from matsumoku.org (whitelist it if possible), wait a day or two, and create the account again.
Possibly the e-mail was returned here undeliverable. This could be for a number of reasons. In any case, I am unable to "fix" your new account from here. The only thing I can do is kill the broken account to allowing you try again with success. If the address is bad I'm not going to be able to get ahold of you, so giving you a second try is the best I can do.
Often it is just a typo when registering. It's surprising how often this happens. 99% of the time the registration e-mail is returned undeliverable stating "no such user" or "invalid mailbox". Again, the only thing I can do is kill the broken account to allow you try again.
Sometimes the address used has restrictions or disciplinary action against it. If there's a size limit to the inbox and it's full, most mail will be returned undeliverable stating "quota exceeded" or "inbox full" or something of that nature. This happens often with free mail services. My suggestion here is either clean out some of your mail folders, or use an account that is not likely to overflow if neglected. In the case of regular members, I'll try to contact you via private message and give it about a week. If I don't hear anything my guess is the account is no longer wanted and I'll quietly dispatch it.
If all else fails you can contact the Forum Admin (me) and I'll do my best to help you resolve the issues.
"My post disappeared. Where did it go?"
Again, there could be several reasons.
Sometimes threads are moved when they best suit the new location. Normally there will be a shadow topic in it's place for a while to avoid the confusion. If you click on your name on the forums anywhere it appears as a link it will take you to your profile. You can click the link "Find all posts by......" and the forums will display all your posts in starting with the most recent.
Another reason, not as common, is a Moderator may have moved or deleted the post/thread for breach of guidelines. The Moderators here are not required to contact you or explain why a post/thread was deleted, but they often will anyway. My suggestoin would be try to stay within the guidelines. I've tried to loosen them up enough to alllow for even the most lively of discussions, and they are there to keep things running smoothly. If you cursed in your post, linked to an image you weren't supposed to, or were behaving poorly there's a good chance someone caught it and it went "poof". Myself and the moderators shouldn't have to apologize for addressing poor behavior, now should we?
On a very few occasions there have been server problems and the forums were somehow damaged. In those rare events it is necessary to fall back to a known good backup. If the backup was done before your missing post/thread, it will have been lost. It's better to lose a few posts than leave the forums broken, right? You'll almost always see a notice when this happens in the "News regarding the site and message board" forum, so check there real quick.
Threads or posts out of scope of this site live precarious and sometimes rather short lives. In other words, posts or threads about Gibson, Fender, PRS, Eastwood, Samick, amps, or posts completely out of scope will normally fall victim to the delete button. The best bet is keep it "Uncle Matt" and all is well.
"I didn't know that wasn't allowed" or "That's a new one on me"
It's always a good idea when you log in and see new posts in the "News regarding the site and message board" forum to go there and read them. It will only take a minute and might save some confusion.
The guidelines are posted and/or available in a number of places here, including when you registered. There has been ample oportunity to go over them, and since they've been revised there's not a whole lot to them. If you've breezed past them you might want to go back and revisit them, for your own sake. It might save an embarassing oversight down the road.
