Why registration

Why have we become so strict about user registration?

We’ve received dozens of complaints about the new user registration policy on Ledger-Enquirer.com. The policy changed in January, and frequent visitors to the site were frustrated that they were suddenly asked to share personal information before viewing content on the site. While we’re still experimenting with how many pages we will allow readers to view before we make them sign on, we strongly believe that registration makes the site better. And here’s how we explain it in e-mails to our readers.

We are asking for information about our audience so we can better understand who comes to our site and where they come from. The few questions we ask are just to get a better idea of who is coming to our site.

In addition, we hope we will be able to help weed out racist, vulgar and otherwise inappropriate comments. We’ve found that if people are asked to register, they are less likely to post the ugly stuff that offends everybody else. And, as you may have noticed, we’re getting a lot of this. Most newspaper web sites require user registration, and many of them seek considerably more information than we do.

We are not trying to limit access nor will we sell this information. The information gathered is for our purposes only.