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I'm an active SE user and have just joined area51 and then the Materials Modeling proposal where I successfully voted five times.

But I am worried about a message about confirming e-mail that I briefly saw when leaving a page. Do I still have to do something with regards to e-mail, or am I "ok" since voting was successful.

My reputation here is now 101 and I think I need more than that (e.g. 150 per this answer from 2012) to commit when the time comes, so perhaps I still have something more to do?

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  • Maybe you can add the "bug-report" tag so that someone from Stack Exchange can take a look. Unfortunately other users (like me) can't edit your question because Area51 questions can't be edited by other users!
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 0:49
  • @user1271772 I'm not sure yet if there is a bug because I am not sure what the expected behavior should be.
    – uhoh
    Aug 25, 2019 at 1:03
  • if you're properly on the followers list, your name would show up on the right side of the Materials Modeling page!
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 1:12
  • Does it say 14 followers or 15? With you it should be 15. For me it still says 14.
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 1:13
  • @user1271772 the problem with the bug tag is that if the behavior is within the constraints of the coding, then the question can have the by-design tag added and that tends to quickly shut down the question. What I'm looking for is an answer to my question as asked which is not exactly what your posted answer does. I am not familliar enough with the expected behavior to know if there is a bug or not. If you are convinced that there is a bug, then you are qualified to ask a new question and use that tag.
    – uhoh
    Aug 25, 2019 at 1:39
  • 1
    You're completely right. I figure that eventually @RobertCartaino will see this question and will probably know much more than me. So no need to add the bug tag for now. I do think there's a bug, but asking another question on this topic might just be too much. Someone will eventually see our concern!
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 1:44
  • @user1271772 thank you for your invitation; the process seems to currently be so complex and awkward in order to filter out all but the most die-hard users. It seems that the process has successfully filtered me out. In plain English, it's too hard for me to figure out how to jump through the hoops.
    – uhoh
    Feb 9, 2020 at 4:23
  • It's true that they have some filters put in place. On top of that there's been bugs in the Area51 page that make it difficult for people to sign in, and they have neglected to fix these bugs because it's "only" Area51. However if you click on the link I sent in my last comment, you should remain signed into your Stack Exchange network account. Then if you click "commit" it should work. It asks for your name, but this will not appear publicly, so you can put whatever you want. You'll get a verification email to confirm that you committed, but other than that there's nothing else!
    – Nike Dattani
    Feb 9, 2020 at 5:51

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I have taken the time to show how I did it, starting from here:

enter image description here

This takes me to the page:

enter image description here

I filled in my Name, Email and Password, and then clicked Sign-Up. This showed up:

enter image description here

I got an email to join "Meta Stack Exchange":

enter image description here

I clicked "confirm", then went back to Materials Modeling and clicked "Follow", which lead me here:

enter image description here

Then I had to confirm another email. This time not for "Meta Stack Exchange" but for "Area 51":

enter image description here

After verifying my email address this second time, my "follow" actually finally counts, and I could vote for some questions.

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    This is excellent, thank you very much for taking the time to put this together!
    – uhoh
    Dec 3, 2019 at 2:08
  • @uhoh: Now that you see you have to confirm your email address twice instead of just once, are you able to check if you're properly listed as a follower? For example if you "unfollow" then follow back, does your user name appear on the side? It would be a shame if your 5 votes didn't count, since the votes are what we really need right now for this proposal to make it to the next stage.
    – Nike Dattani
    Dec 10, 2019 at 2:55
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    Some insight as to why this process is super convoluted: Area 51 runs on an old (2011) fork of the Stack Exchange engine. Up until October 2018, it had its own separate login flow, which only required one email verification explicitly for it. (Back in 2011, the main sites didn't require email verification, but the devs implemented it explicitly for Area 51). Since then, two things happened: the main sites started requiring email verification, and SE removed the separate login flow for Area 51 and routed it through Meta Stack Exchange (as part of a broader rework to remove OpenID support).
    – damryfbfnetsi
    Jan 19, 2020 at 23:03
  • So what you see today is a bunch of ad-hoc fixes: as the login flow is today routed through Meta.SE, you have to verify your email with it first before it lets you create your Area 51 account, then once that's created, Area 51 requires its own email verification process that is a legacy from the time main sites didn't require it. tl;dr it's a perfect storm resulting from Area 51's legacy 2011 code base combined with a bunch of ad-hoc fixes to resolve specific issues as they came up.
    – damryfbfnetsi
    Jan 19, 2020 at 23:05
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I am glad you asked this question because already several people told me they had the same problem, but I just assumed that they were telling me that they had joined my Area51 "just to be nice" and didn't actually join. There was an example of someone that says she followed the proposal, but then it still said "only 1 follower" which was me.

Did you also try click "follow" and not appear in the followers list?
Here is yet another example where someone had problems:

enter image description here

Edit: Also user1420303 claims to have followed in his comment here: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/119484/mixing-basis-sets, but is not showing up in the followers list.

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  • To answer the question in your answer, I have visual confirmation here and here suggesting that I have successfully followed, and I can see that I have voted, however I don't show up in the "recent followers" yet (there are still five total as there were when I first saw the page) but I don't know how quickly that updates.
    – uhoh
    Aug 22, 2019 at 5:54
  • Still says 5 followers! Very strange!
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 22, 2019 at 6:49
  • ANOTHER person has said that he followed it, but it's still showing up as 5 followers!
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 22, 2019 at 7:33
  • @Robert Cartaino, those screenshots in the comment of user "uhoh" do seem to indicate that they followed the proposal, but for some reason they do not appear in the followers list! This user has 50k reputation and I would be delighted and thrilled to have them join! Similar problems happened to other people that made accounts in response to my facebook post.
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 0:47
  • @uhoh: Maybe you can try again? Was there an email confirmation sent to your email address?
    – Nike Dattani
    Aug 25, 2019 at 0:48

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