The form for requesting a PAUSE account should make clear that requests are processed by a human

[neilb]

A certain percentage of people requesting a PAUSE account expect it to be created automatically, and when it isn't, they submit the form again, presumably thinking that maybe the first attempt flaked out. Sometimes we get 3 or 4 copies of essentially the same request.

I think if the "Request PAUSE account" page makes it clear that you have to wait for a human to process your request, then it will hopefully reduce the duplicates, or then make it clear that the duplicates are coming from bots.

[ap]

Might be as simple as adding a mandatory checkbox labelled “I understand that a human moderator will approve my request”.

(Explanatory text that does not need to be read to successfully submit the form is liable to get skipped over, no matter the quantity and placement. You can design it worse but you cannot make it work all that well. Making users have to interact with something is far more reliable.)

[neilb]

Thanks Aristotle – definitely the way to go.