After the introduction of honeypots in the registration form, the property $minRegistrationTime was added.

This value was chosen under the assumption that a human user needs at least 10 seconds on average to complete all fields (including password-and-email confirmations). At the time, the registration form included:

• Username
• Password + confirm password
• Email address + confirm email
• Captcha/Honeypot fields

With WSC 6, the form was simplified. The “confirm password” and “confirm email” fields were removed, thereby reducing the cognitive load and the number of fields the user must fill in. In practice, this has cut the average completion time below the original 10-second threshold.

However, $minRegistrationTime has not been updated, probably leading to an increasing number of false-positive rejections if users submit too quickly. When the form is submitted in less than 10 seconds, the system throws a generic wcf.global.form.error.

Impact

• Poor user feedback
  New registrants only see “Please correct the erroneous fields marked below.” and have no idea why their registration failed, often abandoning the process altogether.
• Conversion loss
  Potential users are deterred by the opaque error, reducing sign-ups.