Contacting an Administrator

[hwfa]

I am one of many volunteers who support OpenOffice.org software via the *mail list* "users@openoffice.org". We have recently been receiving requests for help from users whose registration process for this (www.oooforum.org) web-forum has been interrupted for whatever reason.

In general the result is that the user cannot logon with their username and password but they cannot re-register because the process complains that the e-mail address and/or username is already in use "by another user".

There are two additional features that make this even more frustrating:

1. There doesn't seem to be any way of contacting an administrator without a valid username & password, even though one of the web pages says "contact an administrator" in the event of logon problems.

2. The "forgotten your password?" feature requires that you enter an e-mail address *and* username, but the system doesn't recognise the combination because of the mangled registration process.

It seems that the only way out for a user left in this position is to create a brand new e-mail address and start again. Of course this is usually not convenient, to say the least.

Please, please provide a way out. It seems to me that the easiest way is via the "forgotten password" route. If someone enters an e-mail address, mail out the password to that address or reset the password and mail the new value. I think you also *must* allow non-registered users to contact the administrator, possibly via a special form that anyone can access, *without* a username or password. I understand that this might generate an amount of spam but I think this must be tolerated in the interests of providing a better service to the users.

You can contact me at the e-mail address in my user profile for this forum, or at "users@openoffice.org". If you do the latter, your message will be seen by all the members of that list.

Thank you for your attention.

[pitonyak]

A message has been sent out among the moderators to see if we can address this issue.

Unfortunately, a moderator does not have sufficient access to handle these problems, an administrator is required.
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Andrew Pitonyak
http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php

[TerryE]

Harold, Have a look at such threads as:

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=44114
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=53253

If you want to see some of the debate amongst the moderators and advocates about how we mitigate these issues. The system administrator is draude (Ed Buck) and you can search the forum for his last posts. The ones in 2006/2007 (all two of them) where on

Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:52
Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:28

Ed used to be very active in the OOo community and was also one of the cofounders of www.ASPextra.net which also hosts this forum. However, about 18 months ago for whatever reason, Ed's priorities changes and since then he has minimal engagement in the forum. Basically it is continuing to operate on a basis of zero admin, borrowed time, and tender loving care by the moderators in as much as they can give it.
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Terry
WinXPSP3, OOo 2.4.1, Ubunto 8.04 for development
Also try the Official OOo Community Forum where I mainly post now.