I haven't looked at other comments yet.

Thank you! That's what I hope people do. In fact, I'm going to go back and edit the message and ask people not to read the comments first.

Okay; I follow the link to the site. After looking over the first page, go to registration from the top menu bar. First screen doesn't look hopeful,...

So I take it the "Membership List" button that appears as the second row of buttons after you select "Registration" isn't visible or you didn't notice it? (I'm not trying to be critical; I just am seeing how people viewed it. You'll notice that other people had difficulty seeing those buttons.)

...scroll down, and there's a heading saying "Are you already registered as a member?" ("as a member" is redundant in that heading.)

Actually, it's not. Remember, the underlying issue is that some people react to the term "membership" and others to "registration," and the two groups don't completely overlap; therefore, the only way I can see to catch the union of the two is to use both terms.

I'd rate this A, myself. I probably overrate people's ability to scroll beyond what instantly appears on their screen, though; maybe it's only a B+.

Thank you! I don't take much credit for the overall site design, which was done by others. But if things get screwed up, it's my fault because I'm the one mucking around with the individual pages.

I would have clicked on a "membership" link first if I'd seen one for this task; I remember consciously thinking "nothing here points directly to what I'm looking for; so, what page points in the right general direction?" and that was of course "registration". A top-level link directly to the list would, I hope, be "members" or "membership list"; but I don't think that's really a top-level item.

Neither do I, but some people apparently do based on feedback here and in e-mail.

In a large group there will always be people for whom a page design doesn't work, you're absolutely right. Doing actual user testing (as this is, at a low level) is a good way to find out how actual people actually interact with the page, considerably better than just a few people's mental models....

I'm glad that, so far, everyone commenting seems to be taking this in the spirit intended, and nobody has risen up and yelled "The entire site is garbage! I could do a better job with my eyes closed!" and so forth.

Thanks for the feedback.