Faxanadu said: ckmlb said: fkusumot said: Better to just have a waiting period for posting privilege or to have new accounts approved by a mod. Or both. This is the way to go. so how would you know that those new members would make good posts? Ho to decide without them actually posting? isnt the whole idea of signing up being able to post? how would anyone new sign up if they still were not allowed to post for XX weeks?

1. You don't know if they would make good posts. It would cut down on people making accounts to troll threads.

2. The whole idea of signing up is being able to post, yep. Anyone new signing up would be able to post after the waiting period. Yep.

Anymore questions? I'm sure myself or maybe even ckmlb would be happy to answer.

fkusumot said: Faxanadu said: ckmlb said: fkusumot said: Better to just have a waiting period for posting privilege or to have new accounts approved by a mod. Or both. This is the way to go. so how would you know that those new members would make good posts? Ho to decide without them actually posting? isnt the whole idea of signing up being able to post? how would anyone new sign up if they still were not allowed to post for XX weeks? 1. You don't know if they would make good posts. It would cut down on people making accounts to troll threads. 2. The whole idea of signing up is being able to post, yep. Anyone new signing up would be able to post after the waiting period. Yep. Anymore questions? I'm sure myself or maybe even ckmlb would be happy to answer.

there are good ways to do this without it being as invasive as you are suggesting.  In particular one of these:

 

Basically set it up so that until [condition] you have to enter this code to made a post or start a thread.  Primarily it would cut down on bots, but it would also cut down on the spamming as it greatly delays the speed at which you can post. 

PS - Clearly anyone with more than say 6,721 posts should have to enter this code also....

 

But my point is that there are other ways to slow these spammers/bots down without providing unecessary nuisance to the real new posters (which by the way is very important for community growth).  For example another way to slow these unwanted folks down while minimizing the impact to valid users would be to simply limit the rate at which you can post.  Is it really that unreasonable to limit posts to 1 every 60 seconds for the first week of membership?  I think the vast majority of users won't even notice.  But I will say this shouldn't apply to edits.  I think you could also put a 1 new thread every 10 minutes limit for new users during the first week as well.  I don't think many valid new posters are making tons of threads on their first week.

 

I really think some simple stuff like this can disincentivize the type of spamming we see from these recent "Hus" attacks. Particularly when combined with an IP ban.  Because while yes you can get around all of this stuff what you are doing is building up a series of things that make it extremely tedious and boring to spam the boards. And most importantly without impacting legit users.

 

To be clear I am extremely against this idea of forcing new users into the role of reader only.  I cannot stress how aggrevating this is from the outside.  People usually sign up to make a point on a single topic that has their interest, and the idea is that we hope they stay for more.  If they cannot make that point they typically get frustrated and leave, usually for good (if they are like me).  I think for the sake of the community growth and in general the need to keep an open atmosphere we need to avoid this sort of "waiting period" before you can "talk".  

Conversely people are usually extremely willing to except some very minor annoyances with post per minute delays and the like and on many sites and those image codes as seen above are required, on some sites, for all posters , for every post.  Keep in mind I am saying that some sites have these rules always on for every user and people still participate.  So I think they are more than reasonable to impose during the first week only.

I'll respectfully disagree. The big draw for the site is the numbers, not the community. The ratio of members to lurkers is usually 20/80 or around there. The question is why aren't all the lurkers joining. I predict that measures to improve the community, i.e. post quality and the level of discussion, would improve lurker attach rate.

As usual Sqrl we can agree on the shortcomings of a system in question. We seem to come to different conclusions on what to do about that. Thankfully that leads to discussion.

I have seen alot of good forums goto crap because mods become harsh. This site is great and having idiots is just side effect. Its worth putting up with rather than have all the good posters leave as well because they get sick of overzealous mods.

fkusumot said: I'll respectfully disagree. The big draw for the site is the numbers, not the community. The ratio of members to lurkers is usually 20/80 or around there. The question is why aren't all the lurkers joining. I predict that measures to improve the community, i.e. post quality and the level of discussion, would improve lurker attach rate.

A good portion of those lurkers might be bots.

the one post per minute idea is really good.

Say like the first 100 posts have to be under this restriction.

fkusumot said: Better to just have a waiting period for posting privilege or to have new accounts approved by a mod. Or both.

Exactly.

fkusumot said: The big draw for the site is the numbers, not the community. The ratio of members to lurkers is usually 20/80 or around there. The question is why aren't all the lurkers joining. I predict that measures to improve the community, i.e. post quality and the level of discussion, would improve lurker attach rate.

I agree, I think many lurkers are put off by the level of the discussion here. 

High quantity - low quality means lower quantity (and even lower quality) in the long term.

 

fkusumot said: I'll respectfully disagree. The big draw for the site is the numbers, not the community. The ratio of members to lurkers is usually 20/80 or around there. The question is why aren't all the lurkers joining. I predict that measures to improve the community, i.e. post quality and the level of discussion, would improve lurker attach rate. As usual Sqrl we can agree on the shortcomings of a system in question. We seem to come to different conclusions on what to do about that. Thankfully that leads to discussion.

We don't disagree that the numbers are the draw but what is the point of having a draw if people are frustrated by your system to the point that don't care to even try and participate ...particularly when this choice is made easy because  they can just check the numbers and ignore the forums.

The point of the forum system is to entice the folks interested in the numbers to participate while discouraging spammers and trolls, I think we agree on that, yes?

Then isn't the logical reaction to impose restrictions that effect trolls and spammers but not legitimate users?  Clearly not every measure is going to be transparent to the legitimate users but as many as possible should be, right?

My point is that the waiting period only annoys legit users and trolls gladly make fake accounts with legit sounding names and post away once the period is over.  It doesn't really do anything but drive away legitimate users.

The question I have for you is this:  What part of creating a fake yahoo email and then a fake username on this site sounds like it would discourage a person who is wasting their free time spamming and acting like a jackass on the internet? 

@sinha,

have you been to other forums?  this site is a sparkling gem of intelligence compared to 99.99% of other sites on the internet.  Any lurker put off by the level of conversation here has likely never been to the rest of "teh internet". I call BS on that one, particularly when you consider all of the new users who sign up and introduce themselves along with a mention how much more peaceful this forum is than xxx forum.