Setting Up A New Policy

[CommanderOtto]

good idea

wow, why would someone waste his time by creating an image like that?

[NiteRunner81]

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you all of one of our forum rules.. and that is to only use ONE account/username. You can change your username, however, you can only have one at a time....

[kjeopardy]

This is a good idea in order to protect the community from online sickos. However---people should still keep in mind that anyone can read the forums and copy pictures posted to it. The only thing this new policy does is prevent unauthorized users from posting on these forums. The idea has several drawbacks, however.

Aren't you worried Nite that this might discourage legitimate people from joining the community?

How are you going to decide whom to accept and whom to reject? Are people only going to be able to join the community if they can get an existing member to vouch for the fact that they are not an internet sicko?

I don't know. It's sad that someone had to do this and make the admins and new registrants' lives more difficult.

(BTW: did you ban the guy's IP address instead of just his username?)

[wcocaboose]

Aren't you worried Nite that this might discourage legitimate people from joining the community?

Users are notified in their initial registration email that their account is pending activation by an admin member. This is a reasonable common practice and should not discourage legitimate users from registering.

How are you going to decide whom to accept and whom to reject? Are people only going to be able to join the community if they can get an existing member to vouch for the fact that they are not an internet sicko?

There are several easy ways to identify a user registering with the intent to spam vs a legitimate user. Most of the time(at least in my experience admining another community) spam emails come from completely one off/weird email domains; not from a legitimate email domain. Usernames also generally appear off at face value, as opposed to legitimate usernames.

The activation by admin setting is not intended to be used as a power grab to block people from registering who are genuinely interested in the community. The settings acts as a temporary buffer to allow the admin time to review registrations and reject those which were setup with malicious intent. When I first began running my communities forums we had anywhere between 25-75 users registering a day just by way of automated registration scripts; before adding in additional registration protections that guaranteed users had to be human to register.

Further I have never seen anything from the swgo admin team to lead me to believe this setting is going to be misused. We shouldn't be so quick to assume nefarious intent behind this move, as legitimate issues are being addressed. With the amount of responsibilities many community admins have online, as well as real life the last thing they are interested in is purposefully restricting the growth of their community needlessly.

[kjeopardy]

Aren't you worried Nite that this might discourage legitimate people from joining the community?

Users are notified in their initial registration email that their account is pending activation by an admin member. This is a reasonable common practice and should not discourage legitimate users from registering.

How are you going to decide whom to accept and whom to reject? Are people only going to be able to join the community if they can get an existing member to vouch for the fact that they are not an internet sicko?

There are several easy ways to identify a user registering with the intent to spam vs a legitimate user. Most of the time(at least in my experience admining another community) spam emails come from completely one off/weird email domains; not from a legitimate email domain. Usernames also generally appear off at face value, as opposed to legitimate usernames.

The activation by admin setting is not intended to be used as a power grab to block people from registering who are genuinely interested in the community. The settings acts as a temporary buffer to allow the admin time to review registrations and reject those which were setup with malicious intent. When I first began running my communities forums we had anywhere between 25-75 users registering a day just by way of automated registration scripts; before adding in additional registration protections that guaranteed users had to be human to register.

Further I have never seen anything from the swgo admin team to lead me to believe this setting is going to be misused. We shouldn't be so quick to assume nefarious intent behind this move, as legitimate issues are being addressed. With the amount of responsibilities many community admins have online, as well as real life the last thing they are interested in is purposefully restricting the growth of their community needlessly.

Hmm...I see. Obviously no administrator wants his/her community to shrink---the whole purpose of a forum is to have it grow!

I've never run a forum before, so I don't really know of the protocol/procedure involved in admin activation. Thanks for clarifying—I see what you mean; this new screening shouldn't be an extra burden on honest users.

You say that spam emails come from weird domains---I thought that automated accounts came from weird domains. There is nothing which prevents a user with nefarious intentions from creating a perfectly normal gmail/aol/yahoo account and using that to register on SWGO forums.


The move is a great idea, and I'm all for SWGO administrators implementing a system that bars users like the one who doctored that picture, I just don't see how this move can really keep losers like that off of the site.

BTW: I'm gonna go ahead and coin the term "SWGO background check," in the unlikely event that people start using it---you will have heard it here first!!

best,
3.14pi

[wcocaboose]

It will not prevent every single user that is not here for a legitimate purpose from getting on the site. There is 0 sure fire way to do that with most things on the internet.

Think of it like a peep hole in your front door. Someone knocks and you look through it, and see that they look like a scumbag; you don't open the door. You see someone in s polo and slacks, and they are bringing the word of the Frisbee, or a new vacuum.

The peep hole is not 100% effective either, but it is a tool in the toolbox to protect your house.

[haasd0gg]

I prefer a 12ga, but this will do fine

[Pootus]

Agreed....good move.

[-)G(-Sawyer]

[haasd0gg]

Agreed....good move.

Pootie Van Winkle... its 2013 now