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Like trolls, for example.
As for those who *would* be excluded... well, like Z de Scathath, for starters. Or anyone else without a credit card/electronic banking etc.
It's a problem to consider, essentially. The more we insist on people paying with their own credit cards, the more accountability they have (we know who they are, can ban a name as well as an IP range or a set of mannerisms), so the easier it is to deal with trolls &c., but also the more acute the focus on them is, which could make people uncomfortable. That's a balance that needs to be worked out.
A sponsorship or patronage scheme might be a possibe way to do that, or a limited posting scheme for unbanked members (5 posts a day, say, on provision of a proper email address? It wouldn't kill trolls, but it would slow them down...) as a "provisional period"... I dunno. The patronage model that we currently have both limits the people who can join and does so on pretty arbitrary criteria - that you joined before the portcullis went down I agree with Tom that this is not sustainable in the long term, but also - no disrespect meant - I don't want to se Barbelith getting much dumber, or being trolled to near-death again. Maybe the $5 donation would mean people would not join for purely frivolous or mailicious purposes... |
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). Paypal says that it's system is secure, but so did several other companies who subsequently got hacked and had bank account and credit card numbers stolen. Of course there is an important point here. The biggest problem with some plastic only sites is that they will only allow a person to join on their OWN credit card. I think that it is usually possible for a person to find someone with a credit card willing to let them use it, but not always. Letting people join on someone else's card might ameliorate the problem. The problem is that many services along those lines will not allow someone to do that because of theft liabilities.