The current registration process is a bit confusing and ambiguous to me.
The initial registration page is more or less OK as is, but because I had a pre-registation question I sent to info at puri.sm and got an autoreply from git at puri.sm I mistakenly assumed that once an account was established that the support address for the gitlab account is git at puri.sm . This was reinforced when the answer to my initial question also came from git at puri.sm .
The web page after filling in the registration form and clicking the Register button has a notification that registration is pending approval. This is completely understandable because of spammers, etc. But there is absolutely nothing saying that nothing will happen until approval is proactively requested and no directions for where and how to make the request. It took me several days of daily checking to intuit that I needed to to send something to support and where to send it. (I was trying to be patient and know from reading the forum that support is overloaded.)
Most internet accounts including non-gitlab based SCCS immediately send an email to the new account registered email address with an email address confirmation URL. If Purism want to make that an additional step, an automatic mail should still be sent with clear instructions for how to request approval and an (honest) estimate for how long approval is likely to take.
I think fixing the web pages will reduce the load on support and adding some automation will reduce it even more.
I think everyone agrees that this process isn’t working well. (I was lucky. I set up my account before it became a problem to do so.)
However I don’t think that automation is a good idea if spam is a problem. You actually want a human in the loop deciding whether the request is malicious etc.
One thing that I have wondered about over the years is whether there could be some process whereby a high-reputation forum account could be used to expedite the approval process. However I recognise that some people may intentionally not want linkage between the two accounts.
Fair points, but I would like to clarify my original post.
I was asking that the page after clicking on Register have more information regarding the next step. I anticipated that Purism might think that problematic securitywise, so I proposed an automatic email with the details of what is required of the new user. I would prefer fewer steps, but do not object to having to request approval as long as it is clear that I need to and how to do it.
I thought that active forum participation and/or (possibly multiple) hardware purchases should speed things up but didn’t want to complicate the post further. Using different usernames and email addresses would obscure any connection between the accounts except same IP address could spill the beans. Using same username and email address should imply the same person and I am hard pressed to see why anyone would want a wall blocking Purism knowing it is the same person. Of course that particular level of service is likely a pipe dream until support is running smoothly.
But improvement of the “account approval pending” web page is needed now.