I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
+12
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
Lurkers were allowed to donate so it seems they're able to be part of the community when it matters. They should be considered part of the community all the time.
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
The site is being formed by a long established userbase with clear shared values amd investment, why would we open that to influence by a 30 day account?
They have no demonstrated no community fit or understanfing or desire to actually contribute.
Voting is how you set the direction; it is precious. We are a community of likeminded people and will be made uo of volunteers. Voting should have a higher bar than "I want to" if this places tone and values are expected to last
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
The site is being formed by a long established userbase with clear shared values amd investment, why would we open that to influence by a 30 day account?
They have no demonstrated no community fit or understanfing or desire to actually contribute.
Voting is how you set the direction; it is precious. We are a community of likeminded people and will be made uo of volunteers. Voting should have a higher bar than "I want to" if this places tone and values are expected to last
Why are you asking me to defend a position I have not taken?
0
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
The bar is higher than "I want to"
It's "First of all I even found this place, then I signed up, and have been hanging out here for over a month"
Those aren't the same.
And, again, statistically, many of them donated!
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
The main thing is to avoid having second class members of the board. As long as someone can make an account, and then eventually have full status without having to jump through ridiculous hoops I'm ok with having a time minimum. But there has to be a way forward for members who are part of the forums, but it might take them years to get to 20 posts or whatever arbitrary number.
There are cherished members of our community who started out that way.
Not based on current data, as the percentage will change based on the number of users. Active daily user is going to be people who logged in over the prior month or so. The idea here is that if a vote can't get even 20% of users involved then the Board/petitioner needs to reconsider their proposal.
Apologies if I'm misremembering the exact numbers, but weren't estimates given previously that suggested an estimated 500-1,000 lurkers out of a pool of roughly 1,500-2,000 or so forumers who have posted in the last year, when folks were running the numbers?
The exact numbers aren't really important, other than to suggest that there seems to be a sizable portion of the forum who are 'active' in terms of reading and logging on irregularly, but not necessarily 'active' in the sense that they are posting/reacting/etc.
So, as a hypothetical to attempt to convey my thoughts; say there are 1,500 'active' members in a given 2 week period (have logged on in those two weeks), of which 1,000 have posted anything at all.
By this standard, a 20% participation of 1,500 would be 300, but if ~500 of those aren't actually participating in conversations, the 300 requirement is actually more like 30% of the forum.
Now, yes, this is glossing over that there are lurkers who surely would add a vote or contribution on something important. That we saw something like 750 surveys filled out (approaching 40-50% of the forums depending on what the real total is), so this isn't an insurmountable barrier.
Hell, maybe it's even called out as an intentionally somewhat low percentage to account for the fact that a good number of active daily posters probably won't give input on a given topic for one reason or another.
Initially it might not be an issue. Long term, I think it's something to keep an eye on. Imagine a scenario a few years down the road where there are roughly 500 active regular posters and 500'ish lurkers (some posters becoming lurkers, as I have done at times in the past, folks just losing interest or leaving the community, etc).
That 20% of active members is now more like 60% of the active folks, again (possibly incorrectly) assuming that infrequent lurkers are less likely to see said issues in those 2 week periods, and if they do, perhaps less likely to voice an opinion.
So, I don't disagree with the notion, but in terms of futureproofing these endeavors, I thought I spotted a possible snarl, even if not an immediate one. Perhaps this has already been considered and deemed not an issue (or not one in a time frame that makes it worth addressing), but on the chance it hadn't been brought up, I figured I'd take the opportunity.
I mean, it might be a fringe/freak occurrence that's just predicating the forums shutting down anyways because at that point the board and mod pool will be like 5%+ of the active users anyways (not a complaint or a bad thing, we've been shorthanded on mods for too long), but barring a miraculous spike in fresh blood in the years to come, planning for contingencies where the population continues to dwindle as it has over the years seems reasonable.
i think if there is a suggestion forum and no issue with people talking about checking out the suggestion forum, we don't really need campaigns or announcements for them
Not needing campaigning isn't the same as people not campaigning. After roughly a quarter century spent around this space, and particularly the last few years, there are absolutely members who will seemingly make it their life's mission to take something that is personally important to them and make it the subject of every thread they can, however tenuous the connection.
What happens then?
This also links to my point about percentages. If the requirement is 20% of the active userbase but only 30% visit the suggestions forum with any regularity, that's abruptly more like a 2/3's supermajority just to get consideration (2/3 of the people who actually see the proposal), unless there is campaigning (desired or not) to draw in more folks who rarely visit. At the same time, I agree with not wanting endless banners and notifications, in the event someone decides that there needs to be a daily new topic for change because they're bored that month.
And, to be clear, this isn't intended to shit upon the community, but this is a forum that at least started off catering to gamers. Anyone with substantial experience with multiplayer games (digital, board, card, tabletop rpg, etc) knows that a rules set is only as strong as its ability to at least strive to deal with people who aim to use it in unconventional or unintended ways, and since we seem to be aiming to codify a lot of things that were unwritten rules or community standards, it seemed reasonable to at least get that in front of some others for consideration.
To be clear, I get it, there has to be a limit somewhere. It can't just be 'hey, I and five of my buddies think that Forar's a poo head and shouldn't be allowed to post on days that end in Y in the English language', but also that the ratio of folks who infrequently log in/lurk may inherently skew any given percentage substantially, if they truly are and remain a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the community, based on my recollection of the numbers/estimates being thrown around last year.
Fake edit: I see a post by MI that addresses some of these considerations, but I'm a full mug of coffee into this so I'm just going to post anyways, happy to see that those potential issues are being noted.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
To be fair in this case if they reserve their names via that system then they’d be established as full members anyway.
For strictly new new people who are interacting with CoRe for the first time on CoRe, I kind of see Tumin’s point. I don’t strictly agree with it and I don’t have a strong opinion on this specific issue either way, but I also think this is probably a moot issue if existing lurkers on PA reserve their accounts/names on CoRe.
Account age does not mean they read a dingle post or hung out
I think that if you have been a part of this community long enough to hang out on PA, follow this whole endeavor, and transfer over to CoRe, you're enough of a member to participate in votes, even if you've made fewer than 20 posts.
I think the number of new members we get is going to be pretty small. I think the number of new members who only lurk is going to be smaller still (because that's how subsets work), and the number who find CoRe, join CoRe, never post to CoRe, and have a strong enough opinion on matters to engage in voting anyway, is going to be a rounding error. If we think that 30 days of membership is too low for voting, I'd rather see that time increased than have a minimum posting requirement.
I do think there should be a minimum post count for DMs, though. Spammers joining up and waiting a month before getting up to their antics isn't exactly unheard of. And I don't think it's a huge imposition that someone make their presence known to the community before they get to start pinging individual users. It feels like the ratio of fuckery:legit use cases for DMs is considerably larger than it is for voting, so it'd be nice to see some extra protections. Voting is more along the lines of a right here, so the bar should be lower. But nobody is owed the right to spam my inbox with unsolicited messages if I don't even know who the hell they are.
Would you say I had a plethora of pinatas?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
+4
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
edited February 21
I think Forar has a valid point but I think it's something we'll have to keep an eye on - specifically, I'm not sure lurkers never react to posts, and the Feature Suggestion in question is more of a React system, you don't have to type out a reply.
I know the TT said lots of lurkers replied to the survey, as well.
So while I think the concern is valid and one wr should keep in the front of our minds, I'm not very confident what we have suggested here isn't good enough.
But I'd definitely want to see data to contrary the moment there is any
e: like this is just the weakest pushback because I completely agree with the underlying intention.
Tox on
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
None of what I said applies, to me, to people transferring over or who have tenured accounts at PA. If anyone has a <30 day account here and transfers over its an edge of an edge case I dont care at all about. I am speaking entirely about actual new CoRE accounts and users.
xXx_bLunTmaSTeR_420x69? on
+1
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
WRT this thread - I think the only part that matters is the requirements to stop being a "New" member.
The other aspect should probably move to the Water Cooler, and I'd love if Delz, Zek, or Andrew could comment on the technical options
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
0
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
I mean, if anything, an influx of new users itself will likely be something of a red flag.
I'm not saying that we need to go fully isolationist, sneering at every stranger who walks down our digital streets.
But at the same time, it's rarely difficulty to spot a new alt or return of someone who just won't take Banned for an answer. Joined today or very recently. Hops right into contentious political threads with searing hot takes. Has a chip on their shoulder the size of a boulder for certain long time posters.
Given the size of the forum, dwindling numbers, and much of it being closed off from Google (thus, reducing ways folks could stumble across it in the first place)... honestly, yeah, new accounts should expect some scrutiny, if just based on how commonly spammers, scammers, and obnoxious alts seem to make up the 'fresh blood' that happens as it is, and that's with PA (whose own clout isn't exactly at its apex) to potentially draw some folks in.
Standing alone, with limited means of discovery, I'd expect most new actual folks to be more likely to be friends or acquaintances of current members.
Actual new members showing up at random doesn't seem super likely, so while I don't think we should set up a Ninja Warrior level of forum gymnastics for them to get through to prove themselves, I also agree with some restrictions. And someone clearly just posting spam/garbage in random threads to clear the 20 post marker should stand out pretty easily.
Which, to echo what has been said here already, does not apply to existing members (lurkers or otherwise) who would get grandfathered in anyways as long as they're claiming their existing account that's presumably already in good standing as it is.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
0
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
0
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
edited February 21
As the person who has had first access to the results for every poll and survey we’ve run I can confirm that quite a few lurkers vote. Often they have very thoughtful, well considered responses. In the course of doing our votes via Google forms, part of what I do is to weed out duplicate entries and also check each reported username to be sure they’re real. I’ve kind of surprised myself at how many usernames I recognize on sight at this point, but even still I always see a few that don’t ring a bell at all.
When I cross reference them on the forums, they often turn out to be lurkers who rarely post. Or they’ll have something like 20 posts total across 15 years. It’s wild. I remember looking up one person who had a couple thousand posts, but not a single one since 2010, and they had a couple paragraphs of very thoughtful feedback on the forum restructure.
So, I think lurkers (even ones who steadfastly never post) are still a valuable part of the community, and many of them are perfectly willing to participate in steering the place. I wouldn’t want to shut the door on them over post count, personally. And while I recognize that the lighter the restrictions on lurkers are, the more it opens us up to vulnerabilities in our process, but I don’t think trying to build impenetrable walls is necessarily the best way to start off our new chapter at CoRe. It may be a risk, but I think it’s a well considered one, and probably a smaller one than we might be theory crafting in our heads.
minor incident on
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
Account age does not mean they read a dingle post or hung out
I think that if you have been a part of this community long enough to hang out on PA, follow this whole endeavor, and transfer over to CoRe, you're enough of a member to participate in votes, even if you've made fewer than 20 posts.
I think the number of new members we get is going to be pretty small. I think the number of new members who only lurk is going to be smaller still (because that's how subsets work), and the number who find CoRe, join CoRe, never post to CoRe, and have a strong enough opinion on matters to engage in voting anyway, is going to be a rounding error. If we think that 30 days of membership is too low for voting, I'd rather see that time increased than have a minimum posting requirement.
I do think there should be a minimum post count for DMs, though. Spammers joining up and waiting a month before getting up to their antics isn't exactly unheard of. And I don't think it's a huge imposition that someone make their presence known to the community before they get to start pinging individual users. It feels like the ratio of fuckery:legit use cases for DMs is considerably larger than it is for voting, so it'd be nice to see some extra protections. Voting is more along the lines of a right here, so the bar should be lower. But nobody is owed the right to spam my inbox with unsolicited messages if I don't even know who the hell they are.
I don't disagree on PMs. I love our lurkers, but a random conversation with a new person can be jarring at times. It can work out, but I think it works better if a person is posting so you have some idea who they are. I don't know if I fully agree it should be limited, but I can't object either.
I wouldn't object to a longer period, but I do agree that lurkers should get to enjoy the forums their own way. Putting a required post limit on it feels bad to me. I don't want people posting just so they can be considered full members.
I dont know why you feel bad about it. They dont post, they dont shape the conversation. Why should they shape the forum'
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
To be fair in this case if they reserve their names via that system then they’d be established as full members anyway.
For strictly new new people who are interacting with CoRe for the first time on CoRe, I kind of see Tumin’s point. I don’t strictly agree with it and I don’t have a strong opinion on this specific issue either way, but I also think this is probably a moot issue if existing lurkers on PA reserve their accounts/names on CoRe.
I see the point, but I don't think the pros out weigh the cons. Gate keeping is never something to be done lightly. I would never want to limit voting to paying members, but similarly I would not want someone to pitch in money to find out they have no voice at all. Lurkers are, at worst, a net neutral to the forums. Making the place more inviting and welcoming to them will only encourage more participation on their terms rather than forcing it on ours
If I had to predict, I'd bet that about 95% of the legitimate 'new' accounts we get joining CoRe after the transition will be former PA people who just didn't make their way across during the official transition for one reason or another.
Some of them are probably going to be people who may have thousands of posts here as part of the PA Community, but life got busy in 2014 or whenever and they just sorta fell off. Maybe they'll drop in and say hi, maybe they'll just lurk a bit, maybe at some point they'll eventually jump back into forum life with both feet.
At some point (30 days, 3 months, whatever) regardless of their post count on CoRe granting them full membership status even if they just choose to lurk seems...fine and harmless?
As has been noted, if we're happy to take lurker's money in donations and input on surveys, we shouldn't make them second-class citizens just because they post rarely if at all.
If we get an influx of spammers / harassers who let accounts cure for however many weeks / months then engage in DM storms maybe we can address that as its own problem when it arises?
+2
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
But at the same time, it's rarely difficulty to spot a new alt or return of someone who just won't take Banned for an answer. Joined today or very recently. Hops right into contentious political threads with searing hot takes. Has a chip on their shoulder the size of a boulder for certain long time posters.
This, I think, is something a lot of folks aren't considering. The mod staff review every new account created at this point. We're small enough that it's a few minutes a day for 'em. After talking with them about the process, it's clear that they have very little trouble spotting spammers, alts, former banned users trying to get back in, and other ne'er-do-wells. I don't anticipate that this would change dramatically, so I'm inclined to believe that between this and the 20/30 requirement for new accounts, we probably won't be inundated with ill-intentioned assholes infiltrating the forums.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
It could be a legitimate concern. Thirty days makes this exceedingly trivial to amass enough to change things.
One would have to be truly committed to the cause to wait out 6 month windows. But you could also get around this with a collective action if you were able to motivate enough people outside the community to swing in. There does exist a few communities outside of here, and I know at least one of them that has ex-pa members with axes to grind that outnumbers us.. or at least how many folks have been voting.
Does the governance groups have a document or solution to hostile takeovers yet? It might seem silly or crazy, but I've seen crazier shit happen and the focus over community votes and democracies opens you right up to this kind of attack.
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
It could be a legitimate concern. Thirty days makes this exceedingly trivial to amass enough to change things.
One would have to be truly committed to the cause to wait out 6 month windows. But you could also get around this with a collective action if you were able to motivate enough people outside the community to swing in. There does exist a few communities outside of here, and I know at least one of them that has ex-pa members with axes to grind that outnumbers us.. or at least how many folks have been voting.
Does the governance groups have a document or solution to hostile takeovers yet? It might seem silly or crazy, but I've seen crazier shit happen and the focus over community votes and democracies opens you right up to this kind of attack.
We ban them, that's the solution. Even if they really bring in that many people they're not going to not be dickheads for long enough to get through.
I’m throwing in my hat that if people want to see the more personal posts in the private forum then they should not simply be able to access by making an account and waiting. Those more personal posts should be for the active participants who are sharing with the people they interact directly with.
Otherwise why have private forums at all if all you have to do is register an account and wait a month?
So full membership and access to private forums should require at least posting some so folks can know SOMETHING about you. Lurkers can still lurk conversations about games, media, etc.
I mean let's look at this critically. We get such a significant influx of new posters that they are able to sway elections.
But are unique posters not violating the alt rules, who are abiding by our Code of Conduct / Rules and adhering to our values and largely participating in the community. If they weren't, they would get banned.
Um...good? Isn't that ideally what we want even if we don't really expect that is what's going to happen?
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
It could be a legitimate concern. Thirty days makes this exceedingly trivial to amass enough to change things.
One would have to be truly committed to the cause to wait out 6 month windows. But you could also get around this with a collective action if you were able to motivate enough people outside the community to swing in. There does exist a few communities outside of here, and I know at least one of them that has ex-pa members with axes to grind that outnumbers us.. or at least how many folks have been voting.
Does the governance groups have a document or solution to hostile takeovers yet? It might seem silly or crazy, but I've seen crazier shit happen and the focus over community votes and democracies opens you right up to this kind of attack.
We ban them, that's the solution. Even if they really bring in that many people they're not going to not be dickheads for long enough to get through.
That all hinges on them being active posters, lurkers can simply wait out the timer and then they're voting. Though, it is very hard for them to avoid being dickheads so it might be a moot point.
Voting should be open to all, but Posting should be restricted to only people who have voted in two or more community polls. Why should I have to read posts by some bozo who can't even be bothered doing the bare minimum civic engagement?
I would ask those who are currently debating the qualifiers for voting to consider how many forumers actually vote now.
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
It could be a legitimate concern. Thirty days makes this exceedingly trivial to amass enough to change things.
One would have to be truly committed to the cause to wait out 6 month windows. But you could also get around this with a collective action if you were able to motivate enough people outside the community to swing in. There does exist a few communities outside of here, and I know at least one of them that has ex-pa members with axes to grind that outnumbers us.. or at least how many folks have been voting.
Does the governance groups have a document or solution to hostile takeovers yet? It might seem silly or crazy, but I've seen crazier shit happen and the focus over community votes and democracies opens you right up to this kind of attack.
We ban them, that's the solution. Even if they really bring in that many people they're not going to not be dickheads for long enough to get through.
That all hinges on them being active posters, lurkers can simply wait out the timer and then they're voting. Though, it is very hard for them to avoid being dickheads so it might be a moot point.
This being a problem would require several hundred people joining the forum for hostile reasons and being willing to follow the rules long enough to propose a change that would be nakedly hostile to the existence of the forums and the reasons we made them and everybody standing around doing nothing while that happened.
As far as forum functionality goes, I don't want to limit lurker accounts in any way except the bare minimum that proves necessary to combat spammers. We should not be gatekeeping new additions to the community.
When it comes to important elections, I'd be in favor of both a time and post count requirement. Nothing strenuous, just enough to give us confidence that the people voting are invested in the community, and would have been banned by now if they were malicious. Maybe 10 posts AND 30 days?
Hey y'all, I'm not a mod so I'm not telling you one way or another on any of this, but we're getting into very fundamental questions for the community: who counts?
It's fundamental to any democracy, and I would just ask that you please be patient and open-minded as this discussion moves forward and treat all comments in good faith.
as someone who started out as a lurker, and someone who rarely feels like they have something worth adding to in person conversations in most group situations, i think lurkers are a natural part of the forum community and should have the same rights to express how they feel that community should be shaped in whatever way they feel comfortable with
situations of abusing account creation are a technical problem and should be addressed by moderation and review procedures and tools not by limiting members of the community who for whatever reason don't feel like expressing their voice publicly
I’m throwing in my hat that if people want to see the more personal posts in the private forum then they should not simply be able to access by making an account and waiting. Those more personal posts should be for the active participants who are sharing with the people they interact directly with.
Otherwise why have private forums at all if all you have to do is register an account and wait a month?
Primarily, it prevents Google and Archive.org from caching the forums. (Legitimate) search engines and archivers don't register proxy accounts on forums.
I recognize and respect that might be insufficient for you; I'm not posting this as an argument against your concerns.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Posts
Because they are members here. Maybe they will post eventually. Maybe not. Why gatekeep? If someone is enjoying the place and has good ideas on how to make it better I could not possibly care less how much they post. It is not a road I want to start going down as I don't see any value in it.
The site is being formed by a long established userbase with clear shared values amd investment, why would we open that to influence by a 30 day account?
They have no demonstrated no community fit or understanfing or desire to actually contribute.
Voting is how you set the direction; it is precious. We are a community of likeminded people and will be made uo of volunteers. Voting should have a higher bar than "I want to" if this places tone and values are expected to last
If they're good enough to donate money they're good enough to vote damnit.
Why are you asking me to defend a position I have not taken?
It's "First of all I even found this place, then I signed up, and have been hanging out here for over a month"
Those aren't the same.
And, again, statistically, many of them donated!
There are cherished members of our community who started out that way.
Honestly, neither does posting.
Apologies if I'm misremembering the exact numbers, but weren't estimates given previously that suggested an estimated 500-1,000 lurkers out of a pool of roughly 1,500-2,000 or so forumers who have posted in the last year, when folks were running the numbers?
The exact numbers aren't really important, other than to suggest that there seems to be a sizable portion of the forum who are 'active' in terms of reading and logging on irregularly, but not necessarily 'active' in the sense that they are posting/reacting/etc.
So, as a hypothetical to attempt to convey my thoughts; say there are 1,500 'active' members in a given 2 week period (have logged on in those two weeks), of which 1,000 have posted anything at all.
By this standard, a 20% participation of 1,500 would be 300, but if ~500 of those aren't actually participating in conversations, the 300 requirement is actually more like 30% of the forum.
Now, yes, this is glossing over that there are lurkers who surely would add a vote or contribution on something important. That we saw something like 750 surveys filled out (approaching 40-50% of the forums depending on what the real total is), so this isn't an insurmountable barrier.
Hell, maybe it's even called out as an intentionally somewhat low percentage to account for the fact that a good number of active daily posters probably won't give input on a given topic for one reason or another.
Initially it might not be an issue. Long term, I think it's something to keep an eye on. Imagine a scenario a few years down the road where there are roughly 500 active regular posters and 500'ish lurkers (some posters becoming lurkers, as I have done at times in the past, folks just losing interest or leaving the community, etc).
That 20% of active members is now more like 60% of the active folks, again (possibly incorrectly) assuming that infrequent lurkers are less likely to see said issues in those 2 week periods, and if they do, perhaps less likely to voice an opinion.
So, I don't disagree with the notion, but in terms of futureproofing these endeavors, I thought I spotted a possible snarl, even if not an immediate one. Perhaps this has already been considered and deemed not an issue (or not one in a time frame that makes it worth addressing), but on the chance it hadn't been brought up, I figured I'd take the opportunity.
I mean, it might be a fringe/freak occurrence that's just predicating the forums shutting down anyways because at that point the board and mod pool will be like 5%+ of the active users anyways (not a complaint or a bad thing, we've been shorthanded on mods for too long), but barring a miraculous spike in fresh blood in the years to come, planning for contingencies where the population continues to dwindle as it has over the years seems reasonable.
Not needing campaigning isn't the same as people not campaigning. After roughly a quarter century spent around this space, and particularly the last few years, there are absolutely members who will seemingly make it their life's mission to take something that is personally important to them and make it the subject of every thread they can, however tenuous the connection.
What happens then?
This also links to my point about percentages. If the requirement is 20% of the active userbase but only 30% visit the suggestions forum with any regularity, that's abruptly more like a 2/3's supermajority just to get consideration (2/3 of the people who actually see the proposal), unless there is campaigning (desired or not) to draw in more folks who rarely visit. At the same time, I agree with not wanting endless banners and notifications, in the event someone decides that there needs to be a daily new topic for change because they're bored that month.
And, to be clear, this isn't intended to shit upon the community, but this is a forum that at least started off catering to gamers. Anyone with substantial experience with multiplayer games (digital, board, card, tabletop rpg, etc) knows that a rules set is only as strong as its ability to at least strive to deal with people who aim to use it in unconventional or unintended ways, and since we seem to be aiming to codify a lot of things that were unwritten rules or community standards, it seemed reasonable to at least get that in front of some others for consideration.
To be clear, I get it, there has to be a limit somewhere. It can't just be 'hey, I and five of my buddies think that Forar's a poo head and shouldn't be allowed to post on days that end in Y in the English language', but also that the ratio of folks who infrequently log in/lurk may inherently skew any given percentage substantially, if they truly are and remain a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the community, based on my recollection of the numbers/estimates being thrown around last year.
Fake edit: I see a post by MI that addresses some of these considerations, but I'm a full mug of coffee into this so I'm just going to post anyways, happy to see that those potential issues are being noted.
To be fair in this case if they reserve their names via that system then they’d be established as full members anyway.
For strictly new new people who are interacting with CoRe for the first time on CoRe, I kind of see Tumin’s point. I don’t strictly agree with it and I don’t have a strong opinion on this specific issue either way, but I also think this is probably a moot issue if existing lurkers on PA reserve their accounts/names on CoRe.
I think that if you have been a part of this community long enough to hang out on PA, follow this whole endeavor, and transfer over to CoRe, you're enough of a member to participate in votes, even if you've made fewer than 20 posts.
I think the number of new members we get is going to be pretty small. I think the number of new members who only lurk is going to be smaller still (because that's how subsets work), and the number who find CoRe, join CoRe, never post to CoRe, and have a strong enough opinion on matters to engage in voting anyway, is going to be a rounding error. If we think that 30 days of membership is too low for voting, I'd rather see that time increased than have a minimum posting requirement.
I do think there should be a minimum post count for DMs, though. Spammers joining up and waiting a month before getting up to their antics isn't exactly unheard of. And I don't think it's a huge imposition that someone make their presence known to the community before they get to start pinging individual users. It feels like the ratio of fuckery:legit use cases for DMs is considerably larger than it is for voting, so it'd be nice to see some extra protections. Voting is more along the lines of a right here, so the bar should be lower. But nobody is owed the right to spam my inbox with unsolicited messages if I don't even know who the hell they are.
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I know the TT said lots of lurkers replied to the survey, as well.
So while I think the concern is valid and one wr should keep in the front of our minds, I'm not very confident what we have suggested here isn't good enough.
But I'd definitely want to see data to contrary the moment there is any
e: like this is just the weakest pushback because I completely agree with the underlying intention.
The other aspect should probably move to the Water Cooler, and I'd love if Delz, Zek, or Andrew could comment on the technical options
While I understand concerns over safeguarding CoRe against bad faith actors, we should potentially be mindful that we have been struggling to get 30% of the forums right now to vote on stuff.
Putting more restrictions on lurkers may not be the win it appears down the road?
I'm not saying that we need to go fully isolationist, sneering at every stranger who walks down our digital streets.
But at the same time, it's rarely difficulty to spot a new alt or return of someone who just won't take Banned for an answer. Joined today or very recently. Hops right into contentious political threads with searing hot takes. Has a chip on their shoulder the size of a boulder for certain long time posters.
Given the size of the forum, dwindling numbers, and much of it being closed off from Google (thus, reducing ways folks could stumble across it in the first place)... honestly, yeah, new accounts should expect some scrutiny, if just based on how commonly spammers, scammers, and obnoxious alts seem to make up the 'fresh blood' that happens as it is, and that's with PA (whose own clout isn't exactly at its apex) to potentially draw some folks in.
Standing alone, with limited means of discovery, I'd expect most new actual folks to be more likely to be friends or acquaintances of current members.
Actual new members showing up at random doesn't seem super likely, so while I don't think we should set up a Ninja Warrior level of forum gymnastics for them to get through to prove themselves, I also agree with some restrictions. And someone clearly just posting spam/garbage in random threads to clear the 20 post marker should stand out pretty easily.
Which, to echo what has been said here already, does not apply to existing members (lurkers or otherwise) who would get grandfathered in anyways as long as they're claiming their existing account that's presumably already in good standing as it is.
Voting is less of a concern to me than limiting them being assholes. We've had a fairly obnoxious harassment problem, at least in the past few years.
The lack of voters currently would be part of the problem if we just tie it to posts or a small window. It'd be trivial to spin up a few hundred new accounts over a few months or a year or so to start futzing with future votes. Even if you track browser uniqueness like advertisers do that's easy enough to fake or obfuscate too. New users can wait a few months before being able to vote on things, that's not an overly punishing request.
Current lurkers (with accounts) wouldn't really be impacted.
If this is a legitimate concern, I don't know if establishing a longer approval window for new users is going to truly combat that?
Because if someone is quietly assembling a voting force to unleash on any CoRe elections, having them wait two or three months doesn't seem like a preventive measure against it.
When I cross reference them on the forums, they often turn out to be lurkers who rarely post. Or they’ll have something like 20 posts total across 15 years. It’s wild. I remember looking up one person who had a couple thousand posts, but not a single one since 2010, and they had a couple paragraphs of very thoughtful feedback on the forum restructure.
So, I think lurkers (even ones who steadfastly never post) are still a valuable part of the community, and many of them are perfectly willing to participate in steering the place. I wouldn’t want to shut the door on them over post count, personally. And while I recognize that the lighter the restrictions on lurkers are, the more it opens us up to vulnerabilities in our process, but I don’t think trying to build impenetrable walls is necessarily the best way to start off our new chapter at CoRe. It may be a risk, but I think it’s a well considered one, and probably a smaller one than we might be theory crafting in our heads.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I don't disagree on PMs. I love our lurkers, but a random conversation with a new person can be jarring at times. It can work out, but I think it works better if a person is posting so you have some idea who they are. I don't know if I fully agree it should be limited, but I can't object either.
I see the point, but I don't think the pros out weigh the cons. Gate keeping is never something to be done lightly. I would never want to limit voting to paying members, but similarly I would not want someone to pitch in money to find out they have no voice at all. Lurkers are, at worst, a net neutral to the forums. Making the place more inviting and welcoming to them will only encourage more participation on their terms rather than forcing it on ours
Some of them are probably going to be people who may have thousands of posts here as part of the PA Community, but life got busy in 2014 or whenever and they just sorta fell off. Maybe they'll drop in and say hi, maybe they'll just lurk a bit, maybe at some point they'll eventually jump back into forum life with both feet.
At some point (30 days, 3 months, whatever) regardless of their post count on CoRe granting them full membership status even if they just choose to lurk seems...fine and harmless?
As has been noted, if we're happy to take lurker's money in donations and input on surveys, we shouldn't make them second-class citizens just because they post rarely if at all.
If we get an influx of spammers / harassers who let accounts cure for however many weeks / months then engage in DM storms maybe we can address that as its own problem when it arises?
This, I think, is something a lot of folks aren't considering. The mod staff review every new account created at this point. We're small enough that it's a few minutes a day for 'em. After talking with them about the process, it's clear that they have very little trouble spotting spammers, alts, former banned users trying to get back in, and other ne'er-do-wells. I don't anticipate that this would change dramatically, so I'm inclined to believe that between this and the 20/30 requirement for new accounts, we probably won't be inundated with ill-intentioned assholes infiltrating the forums.
It could be a legitimate concern. Thirty days makes this exceedingly trivial to amass enough to change things.
One would have to be truly committed to the cause to wait out 6 month windows. But you could also get around this with a collective action if you were able to motivate enough people outside the community to swing in. There does exist a few communities outside of here, and I know at least one of them that has ex-pa members with axes to grind that outnumbers us.. or at least how many folks have been voting.
Does the governance groups have a document or solution to hostile takeovers yet? It might seem silly or crazy, but I've seen crazier shit happen and the focus over community votes and democracies opens you right up to this kind of attack.
We ban them, that's the solution. Even if they really bring in that many people they're not going to not be dickheads for long enough to get through.
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Otherwise why have private forums at all if all you have to do is register an account and wait a month?
So full membership and access to private forums should require at least posting some so folks can know SOMETHING about you. Lurkers can still lurk conversations about games, media, etc.
But are unique posters not violating the alt rules, who are abiding by our Code of Conduct / Rules and adhering to our values and largely participating in the community. If they weren't, they would get banned.
Um...good? Isn't that ideally what we want even if we don't really expect that is what's going to happen?
That all hinges on them being active posters, lurkers can simply wait out the timer and then they're voting. Though, it is very hard for them to avoid being dickheads so it might be a moot point.
This being a problem would require several hundred people joining the forum for hostile reasons and being willing to follow the rules long enough to propose a change that would be nakedly hostile to the existence of the forums and the reasons we made them and everybody standing around doing nothing while that happened.
{Bluesky Account }{Writing and Story Blog}
When it comes to important elections, I'd be in favor of both a time and post count requirement. Nothing strenuous, just enough to give us confidence that the people voting are invested in the community, and would have been banned by now if they were malicious. Maybe 10 posts AND 30 days?
It's fundamental to any democracy, and I would just ask that you please be patient and open-minded as this discussion moves forward and treat all comments in good faith.
situations of abusing account creation are a technical problem and should be addressed by moderation and review procedures and tools not by limiting members of the community who for whatever reason don't feel like expressing their voice publicly
Primarily, it prevents Google and Archive.org from caching the forums. (Legitimate) search engines and archivers don't register proxy accounts on forums.
I recognize and respect that might be insufficient for you; I'm not posting this as an argument against your concerns.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.