I want to give a good suggestion. Get an answer-the-question thing with multiple different questions. Like "What is the fifth letter in the word magic", "What is the second letter in the word café" and so on. 99,99999% of all spammers today are automated and will not be able to pass that test, even if they pass captchas. I know because been experimenting with antispammer things for some time now and this seems the only working thing at the moment. Tested it on other forums online. Works! Guaranteed! Please give it a try.

It's not just about spambots. It's also about a few individuals who don't know how to play well with others. Once they're kicked out, they simply return with made up bogus email addresses on free servers and wreak their havoc on the forums once again. I've seen dealers come on under multiple assumed names and tout their products. I've even seen other members arguing with themselves just to stir up controversy.

Spambots? That part's easy.

But it is (for me was) really frustrating. Most people own free email hosts because why would you pay for something if you can get it for free and why would you buy yourself an email only to join forums?

Sorry that I thought it was about bots. That is why other forums do things like this and fail at it.

TLille, almost everyone has or can get a free email service. This site is supposed to be for magicians. By requiring a paid service, we can keep a lot of layman and those just looking to learn secrets from entering the Café.

As David said, it's not just a matter of spamming. It's a protection for the Café and it's members.

Well I must add its really annoying to have your account linked to an email address you don't use on a regular basis, like a school email. I would much rather have PM and other notifications sent to my personal Gmail address.

Cardsharp, email addresses have nothing to do with PM unless you start a topic and wish to be notified when a response is made. Of your 102 posts, you have only started about 4 topics and those were back in 2002 2004 so this can't really be an issue for you. The other situation is if you want to be notified by email when a PM arrives in your box. We have no way of telling how many times that may have occurred but it should be a simple matter to just log in and click on your PM icon.

Free server restrictions is an important issue on the Café and I wouldn't look for those to be lifted any time soon.

Dave, Thanks for noticing my relatively low post count, and that I have been gone from The Café for a long time... I simply thought this issue would have been sorted out by now.

There is nothing to sort out. We don't allow free servers for a variety of reasons.

Your low post count really isn't an issue either. I was pointing out that you had only started 4 topics so the notificaton of replies shouldn't be a big deal to you.