[Almonaster-list] Restricting joining access to longterms

[Jerome Z. <alm...@ag...>]

It's rather easy to join a longterm, then check every once in a while whether 
it has started. Unfortunately you might miss its start by a few updates then, 
especially if it has taken months to fill up.

Therefore I suggest the following to reduce the amount of idling in longterms.

When you join a longterm, and it doesn't start at once (because more players 
are needed), the server checks whether you have given a private (else public) 
email address in the profile. If that isn't the case, it says "You need a 
valid email address (in your profile) to join this longterm, so that I can 
warn you when this game starts".

If an email address was given, then a confirmation request is sent to you 
(this is what happens when you subscribe to this mailing-list). If you reply 
to this confirmation request, then you're in. This step is necessary to 
ensure that the email address you gave isn't obsolete.

Now, when a longterm starts, everyone but the last joiner gets an email like 
"Game Artemis 12 on Prometheus has started. Please go to  
http://almonaster.sourceforge.net/ and log in as Wandering Loan to update 
it".