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Invitation only - a quick way to get some fresh blood on the board...

06:38 / 17.02.05

Okay everyone, we're talking about how to handle the issue of new members in an ongoing way in the Policy at the moment, but in the short term and by way of a quick way of easy the problem a bit in the short term, how's about this:

If there are any people out there that you know that you'd like to get onto the board, then all you have to do is:

(1) Between you, find someone on the board to volunteer to collate this stuff (or volunteer yourself). Make sure you trust em. Moderator would be ideal...
(2) Send them the e-mail address of the person you would like on the board - make sure that it's not a free e-mail address, we want ones that come from companies, academic institutions or personally owned domains ideally - ISP-based addresses are less reliable but acceptable if you're sure the person is reasonable, free e-mail addresses (ie. things from Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc are not).
(3) If that person then collates the e-mail addresses and sends me a private message with each e-mail address on a separate line and nothing else in the message (as formatted below) then I'll send out invitations to join to the people concerned.

derek@mountainbadger.co.ck
fertilemonkey@suckstobeU.co.ck

Standard provisos apply - if you suggest someone who turns out to be a troll or an arse we'll all get very cross with you and maybe break something valuable that you own, like your playstation, legs or faith.

First things first - who's going to volunteer to collate the e-mail addresses?

06:45 / 17.02.05

I will.

07:41 / 17.02.05

I support olulabelle's volunteering. She's a moderator, she's assisted in organising board-based activitiy before and she's sensible. Well, she's sensible according to my definition of sensible. Someone else might not agree.

07:52 / 17.02.05

Thirded.

The only problem is, I don't want anyone I know to come to Barbelith. I'm far too elitist.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:10 / 17.02.05

I'd be happy to provide oversight on this - second pair of eyes, sort of thing - but equally happy to leave Olulabelle to it.

One question - how about email addresses from paid-for Internet services? For example, people with Livejournal email addresses - they have paid accounts, so presumably have made credit card payments for them, can be thus identified, yeah?

08:19 / 17.02.05

If they're associated with a LiveJournal account, then that probably counts slightly above ISP and slightly under the rest in terms of reliability. If you can see their site and they seem cool, then it's probably fine. If anyone knows them IRL and thinks they're okay, then that's fine too...

Current choice for volunteer seems eminently reasonable. If you have people you'd like to bring onto the board, then send her their e-mail address. If you could possibly give her a little background on why you think they'd be good too, that couldn't hurt, but no pressure.

08:31 / 17.02.05

I am sensible, honest! And glad to be of service.

I'll show Haus the list too, it's an ace good idea because two pairs of eyes are indeed better than one...

So I guess I need to unhide my email address on my profile. This is cool, it was only hidden so it didn't get...er...what's the word? Harvested? My main email address and my hotmail have both been pretty much SPAM free zones up till now. If I write it the isabella at ioddia dot com way will that help?

08:50 / 17.02.05

That should help - or you could set up a specific email for this? It seems a bit rich to suggest a hotmail one, mind oyu. My ISP gives me about 10 free email addresses - yours might do the same, so you could set up a new one for this?
I'm happy to help too, if I can - if it gets too much for you, olulabelle, just shout.

09:54 / 17.02.05

I'd be more than happy to write to those that fail to make our highly exacting standards and tell them that, actually, they can go and piss off, if Olulabelle doesn't want to ruin her niceness quotient by doing that.

Cos I don't care, me.

09:55 / 17.02.05

Right, I've set up an email address for these requests to go to. Please send all requests for member additions to barbelithmembers@ioddia.com

I'll put my email address in my profile as that as well and then people can easily find it.

10:00 / 17.02.05

Shall we send Mordant's flame form?!

I think we should all agree a standard piece of text we can use and which I can send from the Barbelithmembers email.
Then no-one is nice or not nice because it's from Barbelithmembers.

Why don't you write it Sax and then we can all have a look.

Ninjas make great pets

10:03 / 17.02.05

a question..

what if your a lovely at heart (say me for example) but more silent partner in lith terms? I love reading but don't write often which means most probaly don't know me or those quiet types like me? (could be a year between posts)

how can you recommend someone if noone knows you? (no live journel, no blogs, hotmail acc - sounds bad combo under voicings here)

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:11 / 17.02.05

WEll, we can look at your member profile, and notice that you have been here for 2 years, and posted 189 times, and have at no point done anything that has had you banned. That gives us a bit of benefit of the doubt. If the people you invite on, who get through the selection procedure, turn out to be trolls, you probably have to take some responsibility for their behaviour...

Ninjas make great pets

10:15 / 17.02.05

(actually been here nine years as someone else - but whos counting)

fair point Haus. thanks.

Tryphena Absent

10:16 / 17.02.05

Shall we send Mordant's flame form?!

Is that a legal issue?!?

11:25 / 17.02.05

This is quite fun! I wish I could think of people to invite. My only invitee has already joined and is skulking around almost silently. Come on Brunner, join in!

17:08 / 17.02.05

News update: This is exciting! I've got two random applications and one 'sponsored' already and all three of them are really nicely written. I'm going to show them to Haus and see if he agrees and if he does I'll add them to the list for submission to Tom.

If it keeps at the rate of around three a day that will be forty-two every two weeks, so I think we should probably submit them in two week blocks.

Has anyone got any ideas on wording replies for both acceptance (being added to the list and explanation that it will take two weeks) and also rejection? I don't mind replying but I wonder if we should write two standard messages we are all agreed upon.

17:29 / 17.02.05

are you going to put a limit on how many people you accept at a time? like 50 a week? and does ones account expire after an amount of inactivity?

17:34 / 17.02.05

If it stays at a few a day then I don't think we need a limit, but if we suddenly get hoards then I guess we'll have to think again.

I've started a thread in Policy for information and comments on the Barbelith Members submission list and for help with composing text for replies.

I don't know about inactivity levels, I think maybe we should consider that when Tom has more time to set up systems to deal with it. I mean this whole 'me and Haus collating member submissions for Tom' thing is, I think in part at least, to free up some of his time. Also it makes sense to do it in blocks rather than adding people every day.

19:34 / 17.02.05

In hopes to help hide lithers from spam, I would like to point to a nice little app/online tool called Enkoder. It generates a self-contained javascript function that you can copy and paste into anything that accepts html code (Haven't tried here but I think it could work). Spambots can pick up email addresses that are spelled out now (ex. me (at) you dot com) and Enkoder hides it from them all.

Just some help to the helpers.

07:24 / 18.02.05

The trickle in at the moment seems to me to be at an initially nice level, but as soon as we changed the register page to reflect the proposed plan, I think the levels of submissions would go up quite dramatically - at which point, I think we'd have to set up some kind of discussion list or something so that a number of moderators could get oversight and vote on the people they dont' think or do think should be on the board... As I said in another post, the register page has been looked at 2500 times in the last month, and I personally think that the community could probably only handle about a hundred new people joining a month...

08:04 / 18.02.05

Here's a plan which would weed out the non-committed and only ensure we get a new recruits of a high-calibre of discerning taste:

All new members have to buy my book.

Sorry. I'm a shameless whore.

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:39 / 18.02.05

Heya Olulabelle/Haus. If you want an extra pair of eyes/to divide the checking, I'm happy to help/Pm me for email addy.

15:47 / 23.02.05

*bump* since it's slipped around to page 2.

14:27 / 26.02.05

*bump* for the same reason Leidopteran gave.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:49 / 28.02.05

One of my friends emailed me on Saturday to let me know that ze wants to sign up. Have given hir the ioddia.com addy--you should hear from hir soon.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:18 / 28.02.05

Thanks for the offers - I think we're good at the moment - in fact, it's all gone quiet... Lula, is all well at your end?