unexpected agreement requirement

[thorny]

Did anybody else try to refresh a page on this forum today and get confronted with a privacy form requiring agreement in order to access the forum?

The form itself looked pretty much standard boilerplate; but I wasn't expecting it, and wonder what's going on.

[dmeck7755]

I got one this am. I thought it may have been related to all of the work restructuring the site. 

[JoB]

Did anybody else try to refresh a page on this forum today and get confronted with a privacy form requiring agreement in order to access the forum?

Well, I tried to log in and ran into it, but yeah.

The form itself looked pretty much standard boilerplate

... though the result looked like the boilerplate didn't manage to get it properly cooked IMHO ...

but I wasn't expecting it, and wonder what's going on.

Well, the markup did say that the policy was last edited today (02-Mar-2022) and effective as of today, so having it pop up for confirmation now makes sense, as hurried as the thing may look ...

[Jitter]

There have been some changes in the forum software, pushed on by the software provider (Simple Machines Forum or something like that) and our administration needs to do some magic to keep the software working and preserve our own tweaks at the same time. The agreement may be related to that.

Sorry about the hazy details, I don’t have anything to do with the software side of things but I am in contact with the admin. So I know something is going on, but don’t know what it is

[JoB]

(FWIW, to reread the terms after you accepted them, look here; there doesn't seem to be a link / menu item leading to it.)

[Keep Looking]

Hi, you've summoned the person who knows what's going on!

Essentially, for the last week or two the forum's had an error where new users trying to register get directed to an error page once they register (and are thus unable to make an account). I realised pretty soon that this issue was quite out of my depth software-wise, so yesterday I reached out to Hushpiper, one of the other admins who knows more about how to keep this site running. Hushpiper thought the registration issue might have been because of our lack of a privacy policy, so they've added a privacy policy to the site. Unfortunately, it appears that was not the issue, so we're still trying to figure out how to fix things up so that new users can join. But that's why we have a privacy policy now!

[JoB]

Essentially, for the last week or two the forum's had an error where new users trying to register get directed to an error page

Actually, the last (successful) registrations happened back on 06-Feb ...

[Keep Looking]

Actually, the last (successful) registrations happened back on 06-Feb ...

Yes, which is rather weird, since the last thing I actually did anything of note to the site was on Jan 19th, so I've got no idea why this error has popped up when it has. Hopefully between Hushpiper and I we'll be able to sort it out, though.