We have a brand new system for applying for a SVN account. The previous way (sending an email) worked ok, but the submissions were not very consistent. So I thought a bit about changing it to a internet form and monitored the incoming requests for a while to get an idea how it should look like.

Two things became obvious: first the username, it would be great if the one who applies can check if the account name is available.

And two, to judge the request, some kind of verification from someone would be nice. Although all sysadmins are pretty deep involved within KDE, it is not possible to know all activities and to judge the request correctly.

Both problems are solved now. The web form checks (do i dare to say *AJAX* ?) if the account name is available (although we still overrule nicknames, etc) and the form asks who supports the request.

Additional the form verifies if the email address is valid by sending an email with a confirmation link, so we automatically know the requested address is valid.

On the sysadmin side of things we get consistent forms, which are a breeze to process, which means we can create them faster, which makes everyone happy.

So, if you encourage someone to apply for an account; expect to receive a mail from the system as soon as he or she does that.

The form is located at https://sysadmin.kde.org/svnaccount/ and the techbase article is adjusted.