Almost a year ago I suspended the normal registration procedure for this forum, because of the large number of spambots registering and cluttering up the forum with spam and sleazy stuff.
Since people could only register by e-mailing me, there have been only a handful of people who have done that. (But they have been high quality forumites, of course!) Probably some genuine potential forumites were deterred from bothering.
I decided to turn registration back on for a while to see how things go, but before I had finished writing an announcement of what I had done, somebody registered and posted a message about online casinos! (Which I have now deleted.)
So, registration has been quickly suspended again.
Eventually I will set things up so people can apply to join the forum via the Register button, but the registration form will ask a question designed to identify the real people: e.g. "How did you learn about this website?" Applications will have to be approved by me, which unfortunately will cause a delay in people being able to participate. However, it may be a while before such a scheme starts up, because it requires tinkering with the forum software, which I'm not very practised in.
So, for the time being, the way to join this forum is to drop me an email. Please feel free to do that (unless your main topics of conversation are online gambling and penis enlargement).