I shall interleave my responses, below.

On 9 December 2013 21:33, John Pilkington <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi:  I've just lost a fight with the elrepo bugtracker's verification
> procedures,

There is a direct contact address that you could have used to ask for
help regarding any problem with the bug tracker:

<contact AT elrepo DOT org>

(I noticed that you created an account earlier this evening.)

> and I can't see where this problem fits into the kernel.org scheme

It does not. Perhaps the ELRepo Users' mailing list would be more
appropriate. See:

http://lists.elrepo.org/mailman/listinfo/elrepo

> I'm in the UK.  I use the elrepo kernel to get support for my USB TV tuner,
> which dmesg identifies as PCTV nanoStick T2 290e (card=78).

What is the Vendor:Device ID pairing for that tuner? I.e. What is
reported by lsusb? That information is a necessary prerequisite for
any investigation.

Alan.