If you're a recent sign-up for JoomlaChicago (within the past six months) you know that in order to participate in the LIVE monthly meetings, our online Discussions, or even to comment on an article, you're aware that our sign-up process is a little different from other typical sites. It's NOT automatic. 

Does that mean we don't want more members? Heck no. There's just one reason for it: to not only cut down, but to totally eradicate those pesky automated commenters and robotic messages, so common on other free sites.  Another way to cut down on the spamma-lamma is to charge a fee to be a member.  We thought, rather than require payment, we'd switch to a live, eyes-on process for approval/disapproval. 

Suffice it to say, we've nixed about a dozen robots for every fifty or so new members approved (the real-life ones).  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, especially folks who wish to comment on articles immediately (like Johan Janssens, on the recent Nooku article) but after trying out several other automated solutions which did not work, we shifted to the human touch. Hopefully, the human touch is working for you!