Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Policy & Help >

Unfortunate suspension on new user names...

Page: (1)2

23:41 / 20.04.04

I'm afraid that I've had to stop new registrations to the board again, which is tremendously disappointing. Long-term users should have no doubt as to the reasons for this. I should have a solution in place to deal with this kind of thing over the next couple of weeks. It might not be ideal, but it should be a step in the right direction. In the meantime, the moderators have done sterling work in cleaning up the mess. Thanks everyone.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:58 / 20.04.04

Sadly, I have to agree that it was the right thing to do.

02:47 / 21.04.04

Aw bless ye Tom. I was starting to wonder about all the leetspeak and shit.

02:49 / 21.04.04

Whew. Huggles for Tom.

06:41 / 21.04.04

We should consider this an opportunity to get all our new people up to speed with how the board works and comfortable with the local culture while we find a way of rate-limiting new people to the board (and dealing with trolls). I'll be writing up a proposal for Cal this weekend, and he'll be coding it as and when he can over the next couple of weeks.

07:59 / 22.04.04

I also think we should see this as a good thing for the reasons above. And having to answer the same questions over and over might have been becoming wearisome for some people, so no new members for a bit will give them a rest!

22:28 / 01.05.04

I'm guessing the suspension has changed given that we've had upwards of 10 new members this weekend (many of them already waving their flags and setting up their lawn chairs for the fireworks in Switchboard)?

22:40 / 01.05.04

I turned them back on for a bit to test the new requirement that people should use real e-mail addresses when they logged in. Are they behaving themselves or not? Should I turn them off again?

00:16 / 02.05.04

More time is probably needed to know for sure. Just some settling-in-obnoxiousness, I hope.

00:43 / 02.05.04

I'll stick it on pause for a little longer then, just until we've got some more of the other stuff in place that should help us manage trollsome individuals.

01:23 / 02.05.04

Hang on. What Switchboard activity are we talking about here? If it's just the two posts in the Rene Gonzalez thread, then that's most certainly not something to be closing new membership over. Or are moderators supposed to prevent new members posting arguments that either haven't been thought out very well or are contrary to majority board opinion in the new scheme of things?

02:46 / 02.05.04

I like the dissenting viewpoints, but the one (deleted) post was a hit-and-run to call the topic-starter a cunt. Ooo! Repartee!

Anyway, when Tom says real email addresses what does this mean?

03:22 / 02.05.04

The Pat Tillman topic seems to be attracting a lot of 'first posts' from people. Hopefully they'll actually stay and post again to partake in the discussion rather than just make their statement and leave...

08:44 / 02.05.04

What it means is that rather than just being able to register and post immediately, now you have to actually input a working e-mail address, receive an e-mail to it and click on the link inside it to confirm your registration before you can post. This is not a particularly unusual thing to happen online but for some reason we never instituted it for Barbelith. Because we also insist that you have unique e-mail addresses it does make it slightly harder for people who want to cause trouble to do so.

08:45 / 02.05.04

With regard to new registrations as well, I think I might go through little stages of keeping it open for a couple of days and then closing it again until it seems confident that we can manage the incoming flow a bit better.

09:43 / 22.05.04

Just wondering how things were going it getting the new regisitration system going? Someone I know is champing at the bit to get on here

.

09:51 / 23.05.04

Gah. I wish I knew to be honest. I sent all the things I'd like Cal to do ages ago, and he agreed that he'd try and get them done, and indeed has done a variety of them. But I think he's too busy to finish them off, which is totally understandable, totally up to him but still a bit inconvenient. Sorry everyone. I'll mention it to him when he's in town in a couple of weeks if he's not already done them by then.

Also I'm in the middle of the most ungodly work crush at the moment and as a result am not really as clued up as to what's going on around me at the moment. Apologies again.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:03 / 23.05.04

Sorry to add to your workload, Tom... but I also know someone who'd like to join.

Is it like last time, when we can pm you and recommend people? Don't worry if it isn't... she knows the deal (I printed her most of the relevant threads leading up to this, so she knows the score). If you'd rather we didn't, I won't.

Anyway, these young Jedi have gotta learn patience, haven't they? (And I don't mean the card game. Even though it's fun.)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:04 / 23.05.04

Oh, and huggles to Cal. (And your good self, to, while you're at it.)

18:49 / 05.06.04

I've just managed to register at Gamefaqs and the way they handle new user registration is interesting, to say the least. I know I've mentioned a little of this before, but a lot of it is new to me.

Last time I tried, my ISP was BT Openworld. The first page I was taken to asked me for my desired username and password. Once I'd selected those, the next page I saw said that my ISP wasn't trusted by the site - basically, it's one that a lot of their previous trolls used. I couldn't register with an @btopenworld email address straight off - one option was to use an alternative email host. Not a free one - they automatically refuse email accounts Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. if your ISP is on their blacklist. The other option, iirc, was that I could be sponsored by a current board member. Neither option was viable at the time, so I forgot it.

Tried again today because I've got a different ISP, and this time there wasn't a problem. Once I was informed that Pipex is an ISP "in good standing with the site" I was asked to provide an email address. This time, I was allowed to use any email address, including your Hotmails and Yahoos.

The ISP stuff is an interesting idea in its own right, but the thing I really like is their system of User Levels. If I signed up with my Pipex email address, I would have had a User Level of 15, but because I went with a Yahoo one it's only 11. This defines how many posts you're allowed to submit in any one 24 hour period, how many per hour and how many new topics each day.

User Levels increase. I'm not sure how that works at the moment - it depends on how many 'Karma' points you've got. I'm presuming this figure's defined by a juggling of number of posts without incident and amount of time registered. Once you hit level 33, all restrictions are removed.

They've got quite a bit of idiot-proofing there, too (such as forcing people to preview their posts before submitting them), but it's the new member registration stuff that's relevant to this thread.

10:46 / 06.06.04

Hmm, we had to set up something similar in the forum I mod. Nothing as complex as GameFAQs, god knows what idiocy they have had to put up with, we just instituted a limit on posts for new members. Apart from "sleepers", who try to infiltrate and cause havoc over a long term by becoming respected members of the board, and then starting internal flame wars etc. (not usually a problem if you don't have organised enemies, like we do), most trolls don't have the attention span or patience to go "silent running" long enough to get in, and by then are easily banned anyway. Few are willing to go past that point of diminishing returns, but I can understand the kind of hatred and obsession that drives those that do. Difference being, I like to think that I have a life...

20:42 / 23.06.04

Any status on the reg upgrade? I just heard another woe from someone who wishes they could join us.

20:22 / 25.06.04

I have to be honest, I really thought it would get done really quickly but Cal's moved abroad and he's not got as much time as he thought and it doesn't look as plausible that we'll get it done quickly...

12:11 / 08.07.04

Sorry, Tom, just thought I'd ask Stoatie's question again:

Is it like last time, when we can pm you and recommend people?

I too have a friend who would very like to join and who I can vouch for (she is much less highly-strung than me and everything...). Also like Stoatie, of course, I totally understand if you haven't got time/inclination for individual registrations at the moment.

13:41 / 13.08.04

i have someone champing at the bit too. he's much nicer than me as well.

understood if there's no can do at the moment, but where did this sugar mountain dude come from?

23:36 / 08.09.04

I also have a friend who wants to join up but I doubt I could even get anybody to vouch for me, much less do I imagine my vouching for somebody else would be worth much. I suppose this is just a request to be added to the waiting list should one spring into existence.

23:30 / 09.09.04

Has it been opened up or was David Batty admitted so he could respond to the comments on his article? (Which was a good call if that's the case, it did the thread some good.)

22:49 / 11.09.04

He pinged me directly and I said I'd stand up for him if people didn't believe it was really him. I have a relatively quick backdoor for letting people in, but it's not the most secure of situations so I'd really rather not tell a lot of people about it or let them in on a whim. I would LOVE to find a way to let you guys do all this stuff by yourselfs, but it's not as easy as it sounds...

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:47 / 11.09.04

Aah! It speaks!

12:33 / 12.09.04

I love you.

I have always loved you.

Try to remember.

21:09 / 13.09.04

Fair enough. Thanks.

12:05 / 17.09.04

Grr. Sorry - I only have the barbelith suit to stop someone else having it and looking official on the board. Occasionally I log in as it when I'm doing development work and forget to log off. Was using a browser I don't normally use and posted innappropriately. Sorry!

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:33 / 17.09.04

Hi Tom - while you're here, can you give us a steer here?

08:19 / 18.09.04

I was just wondering whether this:

He pinged me directly and I said I'd stand up for him... I have a relatively quick backdoor for letting people in, but it's not the most secure of situations

implies anything about the few other new members who have joined since the board was closed (sugarmountain, sugarmountain12, green_tara etc)? Like, does it mean they've got in through the insecure back-door and should be hunted down? Probably not, but once I'd started wondering I was compelled to ask.

16:49 / 19.09.04

On the whole these people have been shown the back door. I'm trying to make things a little more secure so that they can't chuck that information around. i've made it very clear to them that if it becomes clear to me that they've spread the access point around then I'll just have to shut it again, so hopefully it won't be a big deal...

Page: (1)2