Creating accounts here

Based on some initial experience with people creating accounts, I've decided to change it so that I need to review new accounts before they can be used. This is mainly so that when you can log in, you'll actually have the access you probably created the account for in the first place. It does mean you can't use the account immediately, but you'll be able to actually get the access you presumably want just as fast.

I'll often get to the review of a new account very quickly, like within an hour or two; rarely it might be as long as a couple of days.

Initially at least, I've made it so anyone can create an account and then log in immediately. I could also make it so that you'd have to respond to an email sent to the address you supplied, as a way of verifying that it's a real address and that it's yours. And/or I could make it so I'd need to approve your new account before you can use it at all.

My inclination is to keep the hurdles to a minimum until experience shows that I need to raise them. I know the CAPTCHA challenge (the image with squiggly letters you need to type in) on the registration form can be annoying, but without the CAPTCHA it's guaranteed that I'll get bogus accounts created by bots, for the purpose of comment spamming and so on.

It could be that people might be confused when they log in to a brand new account and they still can't see the family photos, for instance. I could avoid that confusion by making the accounts inactive until I've had a chance to review them. Might be a little more straightforward on the whole.

What do you think?