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Toughest, fastest etc - no pejorative sense implied. I think that if we had selected based purely on a subjective impression by a moderator of whether the applicant would be a good sort, Barbelith would have taken a different path - not necessarily a better one, but a different one. As it was, our admissions process gave the _impression_ of being elitist, without actually being elitist - the worst of both worlds, I suspect.
Eek - your words are kind, but sadly misplaced. The admissions process now demands very little of my time, and is only depressing because I am afflicted with a powerful sense of having failed both those within and those without the gates.
Short version - there's a mailbox. That was set up as a spatchcocked emergency solution to a problem that was never fixed. Maybe half a dozen emails arrive a week requesting entry. Some are one-liners, some are very long and involved. Because of the contradictory messages given out at various points in the applications discussion, some people seek to prove their credentials, others request an exemption from the request that they provide a professional or academic email address (which, incidentally, never sat well with me, as being exclusionary, and is also pretty much meaningless at this point when gmail addresses are pretty much accepted as workable email presences for the self-employed - but anyway). At the moment, all of these people get a response email apologising for their trouble and explaining that the Barbelith applications system is currently broken, that it will probably remain so but that if it is unbroken they will be given instructions on how to get in - which at that point would probably be "go to the website, register".
Just to recap, because you are going to have a great idea about this and I want to respect that while also making it clear that it's already been thought of: having one person or a group of people vet applicants is not accceptable, and is also an unfair process to impose on applicant and examiner. Access is provided by an insecure method that could be duplicated pretty much endlessly. So, without robust banning, there's no functional immune system and no way to remove anyone who can get in once. Without sufficient moderators, there is also no way reliably to control the content on the board. What this means, functionally, is that Tom has a board for the contents of which he is legally responsible but over the contents of which there is almost no day-to-day control.
It's Tom's choice what happens with that. In my humble but expert opinion, you'd end up with the few remaining relatively sane members being relocated in the face of trolls, holocaust deniers, inappropriately sexual content contributors, attempts to contact Grant Morrison and so forth. However, that's a choice that's Tom's to make. I can set up a relay that gives anyone who emails the email address access to the insecure entry method. That's very simple. However, I'd need Tom's specific instruction to do so, because it would probably lead to s situation where the whole community needed to be nuked at some later point. Without that instruction, I've effectively closed the applications process, because any action taken using it, especially now there are so few moderators left, would potentially create a state change on the board which I don't think it's my place to authorise.
This is pretty saddening, actually. It's a responsibility I wish I didn't have, and I don't like disappointing the applicants. But, whaddayagonnado?
Oh, and the new member thing updates automatically - it isn't doing that because noone is joining. |
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