What You'll Miss If You Stay On The Sidelines.

[threegee]

A glance at the server logs shows lots and lots of Bedlingtonians (and their near neighbours) lurking and not registering at this moment.

Registration is free, and you will not be letting yourself in for any spam. Your control panel gives you 100% control of your membership. You can even turn off messages from the board if you want.

However, if you do register - amongst other great things - you'll have access to the bedlington.co.uk PMS (Personal Messaging System) which will give you a private message box to exchange personal messages with other Bedlingtonians. Yes, that's what those My Controls ··· 0 New Messages links along the top are!

Your PMS is also 100% under your control, and you can specify exactly who you do (and do not) want to get personal messages from. The PMS system does not involve you in disclosing your e-mail address to anyone, but the registration process does mean that by-and-large people are who they say they are, and mostly locals or Northumbrians now resident in other parts of the world. The registration process is to help protect you, and means that in the case of any deliberate deception there's a fair degree of traceability.

When someone says "PM me" on a post they are inviting you to send them a private message. If you decide you don't want to correspond privately with them then place their handle (message board name) on your exclude list. If you don't want any personal messages then simply turn the PMS facility off completely.

Please note that at present we do not have the resources to give the facilities 24/7/365 moderation, nor do we monitor the PMS system - this would be tantamount to reading other people's post. Because of this persons under the age of 16 may not join bedlington.co.uk as full members, though they may co-opt a parent or guardian to post messages on their behalf.

Update: 23rd April 2006

All the two digit "founder member" membership numbers have gone now, but there's still a chance to own a lowish one, if you don't dither.

And, a reminder to existing members - it's use it or loose it; if you don't log-in at intervals (and check your control panel for messages) the software will eventually trash your membership, PM mailboxes, picture galleries, blogs etc. and free up your username for reuse by someone else. A number of early memberships have already met this fate. Unlike most other community boards our membership numbers are not grossly inflated by inactive and unconfirmed members.