#1
mt.real
Post rating: ~
hello people,

so as you know a small group of people can make accounts here, including me. I am also dealing with emails that come into the rhizboss@gmail account.

what i would like to know is:
- should there be an attempt to let everyone is as long as they demonstrate a genuine desire to post here, and I can let them in secure in the knowledge that if they are terrible posters or have really boring or wrong opinions they will be trolled and hated into shameful oblivion and/or experience a change in mindset (this seemed to work alright in the original lf)

or

- should there be some sort of attempt to evaluate the "quality" of potential posters (this seems pretentious to me) and screen them out. posts are already bad here so this seems like a lost cause but even still sometimes i do get a little spidey sense tingling when i realize someone is going to make bad posts before they even get here to make them.

please note that if we are supposed to be "screening" people then i don't really want to take that responsibility on, i don't think i really represent the greater opinion of rhizzone, so i will try to set up a way for other people to do it. at some point it just becomes beautifulpeople.com though. i guess both approaches suck in their own ways.

edit: we went with choice A and changed up the mods/wardens.

Edited by drwhat ()

#2
mt.real
Post rating: ~
also, people who want to be posting here but i haven't let you in yet, there's more than one of you and i may not be talking about you! or maybe i am. know thyself
#3
Post rating: ~
open the floodgates

e: if you are worried about spam, a compromise could be a probationary period where you get a limit on the number of posts you can make for the first month. like 10 per day.
#4
Post rating: +
One post per week limit for the first three years, following that the limit could be renegotiated.
#5
Post rating: +
There are a lot of really clever people out there and a dearth of online platforms/communities that enable the kind of extended discussions that can happen here (for better and worse). It makes sense to open/simplify the process to allow more people in that can contribute. I don't think there is a risk of being flooded due to the niche focus and archaic interface which would put off most people.

Shitposting not withstanding, the discussions here have helped me learn and change a lot over the years. I even ended up deleting myself from most other online platforms as I felt they were not very constructive in comparison.
#6
Post rating: ~
i sort of like this place being a relatively small community
#7
Post rating: ~
Most new posters don't really become prolific, or even post at all after a few weeks. I really can't imagine sudden explosive growth, we can always stop later or elect a co-mod for swampman if problems arise. If you get tired of having to gatekeep most of the requests maybe we could direct requests to a specific email and make it a rotating/elected duty people could volunteer for like with modding?

(I'm pretty sure open registration is still untenable)
#8
Post rating: +
I agree that open registration is probably not feasible without a larger corps of moderators and admins to stomp out bots and nazis and monkeycheese and liberals. However, more posters means more posts and posts are good, unless they're bad, like mine. A lot of people are going to lurk all the time anyway and that's fine, as long as they're not just scraping the forum for doxxing info.

I think one of the WDDPs had a system where they had a public forum that anyone could register to post in, which was used as the detention and processing center until a DHS case worker could approve the account for general population posting. Maybe something like that could work here? A number of posters could have promotion privileges, allowing them to promote people from the lumpenposter to the posty bourgeois class.

I dunno how much work this would require to implement or what other problems it causes, but it seems like a nice halfway point between invite-only or a hidden cadre of account-creators meditating on a mountainside, and a fully open sewer pipe directly into the forums.
#9
Post rating: ~
im not against new posters but im definitely against open registration, a probation forum sounds dumb as well. i think the current system seems ok but otoh im also not doing any of the work about making new accounts for people who want them so my opinion isnt really that valuable i guess
#10
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
I think we've had a good experience with new members this year so if you think the moderation team & toolset is ready, great. But you need to appoint an additional mod for when I'm busy. I mean there is literally still a twitter account named mustang19 tweeting at rhizzone, as well as multiple groups of weirdos (like Phil Greaves who says this forum is "20 petty booj/rich kids" (we have homeless members*)) who have no other skill but internet stalking. But I don't want to overinflate our importance as a "target" for these people especially since the board is public anyway. Or rather they aren't a major concern in contrast to a government that can lock people up for years for any bullshit reason. I agree with cman about liking the small community but that's also a kind of complacency. I hope this post confused the issue more and made it harder to decide

*AND ALSO UP TO 2 FEMALE POSTERS
#11
Online
Post rating: +
Something lenient enough that anyone can join without undue hassle but with enough security to prevent a psychotic person from amassing a bot army seems good to me.
#12
[account deactivated]
#13
Post rating: +
#14
Post rating: +

tpaine posted:

why not instead of allowing in new posters who will be just as likely to suck as not, we focus on finding and reintegrating lost good posters like future widow and fedallah. we could use internet detectivery to find their remaining online presence and say things "you left some things unfinished at the rhizzone" and "your brothers and sisters and siblings at the 'zone miss you and might hurt themselves if you don't come back" or if necessary, find out where they live and send an emissary such as myself to convince them to come back in person. i can be very persuasive and i've been practicing what some small-minded people call "magic tricks" which are guaranteed to dazzle their eye and provide a compelling case to come back to the rhizzone, where everybody knows their name



sorry but they're all writing for Vice and Rolling Stone and streaming Hearthstone now. they're all successes, we're the failures who are left and can't even get retweets for our posts

#15
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
epic this.
#16
Post rating: +
all i live for on this shit planet is making fun of liberals who post on forums so yeah let them in and make the bad posts, just keep out the spambots selling knockoff raybans and ban the mentally ill fascists like mustang who are immune to mockery.
#17
Kurdt
Post rating: +
hold on now, what kind of prices are we talking about on raybans
#18
[account deactivated]
#19
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

- should there be an attempt to let everyone is as long as they demonstrate a genuine desire to post here, and I can let them in secure in the knowledge that if they are terrible posters or have really boring or wrong opinions they will be trolled and hated into shameful oblivion and/or experience a change in mindset (this seemed to work alright in the original lf)


pretty much this? unless there's an obvious red flag, i don't see why anyone who bothers to get in contact should get an account. the main thing is to keep this small manual hurdle in place. reverting to a web form would be asking for trouble and actually counterproductive if the aim (at least partly) is to reduce the admin/mod workload

#20
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

if they are terrible posters or have really boring or wrong opinions they will be trolled and hated into shameful oblivion


i will say that i dont think this has had a great track record here. it might be wise to actually have some amount of moderation so we dont have to finally ban people only when they experience a breakdown

edit: like dpimpjedi/boourns identity has had almost a full decade of people shaming him for being the worst kind of idiot and has shown zero capacity for getting better in any way.

edit 2: also original LF had all sorts of moderation, idk where this idea that the community was "good" because bad people were shouted down came from, that definitely never happened there either

Edited by c_man ()

#21
[account deactivated]
#22
[account deactivated]
#23
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

drwhat posted:

if they are terrible posters or have really boring or wrong opinions they will be trolled and hated into shameful oblivion

i will say that i dont think this has had a great track record here. it might be wise to actually have some amount of moderation so we dont have to finally ban people only when they experience a breakdown


yeah but this is a separate problem isnt it. i think moderation has functioned best in the past when there's a team of 2-3 mods at any given time, not just to cover absences but also to allow for deliberation and team decisions about trouble posters, because most of the people you'd actually want to entrust with mod powers dont actually enjoy wielding the banhammer most of the time for a bunch of reasons. anyway none of this is a reason to unnecessarily restrict signups (not that i think thats what you're saying, just want to be clear)

#24
mt.real
Post rating: ~
i'm gonna do the "let them all in" approach then, seems like where most people are leaning.

the only reason there aren't more mods atm is that no one else seemed that interested. anyone who's done it previously want to give it another shot? maybe having 3 total would be nice and make people feel like it's less all on their shoulders.
#25
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

yeah but this is a separate problem isnt it. i think moderation has functioned best in the past when there's a team of 2-3 mods at any given time, not just to cover absences but also to allow for deliberation and team decisions about trouble posters, because most of the people you'd actually want to entrust with mod powers dont actually enjoy wielding the banhammer most of the time for a bunch of reasons. anyway none of this is a reason to unnecessarily restrict signups (not that i think thats what you're saying, just want to be clear)


i think that given that there has never been any desire by anyone considered competent to mod the forums to do anything about awful and/or obsessive posters so that they stick around forever until they melt down and try to doxx someone they think is a fed or ddos the forums, my preference is to have a relatively small number of incoming posters.

#26
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

the only reason there aren't more mods atm is that no one else seemed that interested. anyone who's done it previously want to give it another shot? maybe having 3 total would be nice and make people feel like it's less all on their shoulders.


alternately, make me a mod, i make no promises about my behavior or my dedication to the task

edit: this is a joke, dont actually

#27
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
Make gssh mod
#28
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~

drwhat posted:

i'm gonna do the "let them all in" approach then, seems like where most people are leaning.



#29
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +

drwhat posted:

i'm gonna do the "let them all in" approach then, seems like where most people are leaning.

the only reason there aren't more mods atm is that no one else seemed that interested. anyone who's done it previously want to give it another shot? maybe having 3 total would be nice and make people feel like it's less all on their shoulders.



you have my axe if we can assemble a team and we can call ourseves the superfriends

#30
Post rating: +
make entry to the forum the first step in a cool new Augmented Reality Game thing, one where you do cool IRL stuff to make progress-- go wait by a phonebooth for a call from your "comrade," digging up geocached pamphlets etc. let's make communism fun again
#31
Post rating: +
i'd be willing to moderate and would probably even be good at it since i read almost every thread and have been around forever, but i like the rhizzone too much to allow an unfunny liberal attorney to have any power over it
#32
Post rating: ~
urbandale, gssh, and c_man would all be cool mods.

make me comod of dytd for reasons.
#33
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
Alright. The tiny pokemon is hiding somewhere in this field. The potential spawn points are arranged in a grid, every 6-8 inches this way and every 2 feet that way, and 6 inches underground. You'll want to dig a hole at every possible point in order to "catch 'em all." And put a few of these pokeseeds in any hole without a pokemon, they'll attract new pokemon for the next season.
#34
Post rating: ~
Open registration, don't make any of these wormy little slime heads mods.
#35
Post rating: +
Happy to contribute my internet time to light-handed modding if it's needed.
#36
Post rating: ~

tpaine posted:

i can be very persuasive and i've been practicing what some small-minded people call "magic tricks" which are guaranteed to dazzle their eye and provide a compelling case to come back to the rhizzone, where everybody knows their name



i still have the ear coin!

open registration and limit the first 10 posts to a new members forum

#37
Post rating: +
If anything we need more idiots on this site--they almost always drive conversation. The problem with SA-LF and WDDP wasn't that there were idiots posting, but that we were always ultimately under the control of melodramatic buffoons. It's incredibly easy to ban whatever new wave of fascists, liberals and idiots join the site if it comes down to it, but it's a lot harder to actually attract good new posters who may never come back if the registration process is too delayed or annoying.
#38
[account deactivated]
#39
Post rating: ~

elemennop posted:

It's incredibly easy to ban whatever new wave of fascists, liberals and idiots join the site if it comes down to it, but it's a lot harder to actually attract good new posters who may never come back if the registration process is too delayed or annoying.


the first part never happens until it becomes a literal safety concern and i think its at least as likely that Good Posters would leave because of awful people basically being given free rein to be horrible bigots or whatever. i'd be pretty shocked if it were the waiting period, of all things, that kept good people from wanting to post here

Edited by c_man ()

#40
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
I'm fine with trying it and in a week or two we can evaluate whether it was a good decision and if not, I can ban lots of noobs and also all my old political enemies & grudgies whom I will label "noob-sympathizers"