User Accounts

The one thing that ties everything together at MacDomain is the User Account, there are very few of our resources available without one.
At the time of writing, the user account creation is incredibly simple, all one needs is a username and password, after that the user can validate the account themselves, or wait and have the account manually verified which usually takes from a few minutes up to 72 hours. This is mainly to prevent bots from gaining access. If there's something I don't need poking and prodding resources meant for humans, it's the automated tools and utilities that have no business accessing the services in the first place, or unsanctioned and poorly written tools / utilities that drain resources.

There is a background worker that automatically checks accounts for activity, and if there is no activity for a certain amount of time they will automatically be deactivated and moved into an archive. The only option if the account reaches this stage is to contact an administrator to move the account, after which one has to re-validate the account.

While some services do not require an account, like the Usenet and IRC servers. The rest of them do.
In the case of IRC, anyone can connect, join channels and chat with others. While on the Usenet server, anyone may read posts but have limited access to newsgroups where anonymous users may post.

As far as the user accounts at MacDomain are concerned, they are also valid for Macintosh Garden and later other services - meaning you don't need another account for the services provided there or for future services.

Next subsection: Usenet