The 15 Post Rule

[Ozzy]

Hi Guys,
Yes it's me again looking for your feedback before making any more changes, and yes another poll.
There is a very good argument saying that the 15 post rule isn't working, so here is some technical explanation so you know what is possible before commenting.

The 15 post rule is a plug in mod to this forum whcih works purely on number of approved posts on the forums. It is not date dependant. If you validate your email address after joining all your posts are automatically approved instantly, if you dont then all your posts have to be approved by a moderator.

We can have infinite numbers of User Groups. So for example at the moment every one automatically gets "promoted" to the group of "UKBF Member" as soon as they make their first post. Prior to that they are the default "Registered Member". As a UKBF Member you get access to all your profile, posting, signatures and so on. As a "Registered Member" you can just post but dont get anything else.

Promotion is an automated routine that runs every night which calculates how many posts everyone has made, how long they have been a member, and generally a load of house keeping scripts on the forums.

<<Yes I know I'm going on but its important, you'll see why in a minute>>

The promotions system can work on any combination of 3 variables. How long someone has been a member, how many posts they have made, and their reputation score from other members (currently disabled by me).
Users are only promoted overnight, it is not an instant thing.

We do get a lot of spam on these forums which a lot of you might not see. I even had someone today TELLING me to delete his account because he was fed up of not being able to spam on these forums. I was sorry to see him go

I have seen other forums, and am in fact a member of one, where new members have to go through a trial period where all their posts are moderated until they reach a certain level.

So, few options here.
Lose the 15 post rule facility.
Introduce a "Probation" user group where they are promoted after they have been a member for X days and made X approved posts. Whilst on probation all posts are moderated.

Lose the 15 post rule and have a 3 strikes and your out policy.

Perhaps more risky but...
Lose the 15 post rule and introduce a members moderation type facility, where new members join and get a very small probation period. Then they are on an interim membership where they have full function access as UKBF Members.
Long term and active members get a slightly higher ranking which has the facility to rate other members and also give a member a negative rating value. If the members rating on the interim membership falls below a certain level they are placed back on probation. They then have to work again to get their rating boosted back by the members to get back off probabtion.
Slightly risky to abuse by some members, but it can all be automated which I like.

Finally, leave as is...or any other better ideas?

 

[cjd]

All too damn complicated for me - If I wanted a place with rules I'd join a golf club

I run a forum with no rules to speak of other than no abuse or spam. We get spam but it's easily managed.

The only thing I'm concerned about is the quality of the advice and comment I read and I use my own judgement for that, not post count or any other promoting mechanism.

 

[Ozzy]

Hi CJD,
There used to be a time when these forums were like that also, but we need to look at some comparisons.
Your forum most ever online at one time is 18, this forum was 102. Your forum has 5 users online at the moment, this has 50. This is by no means bragging, I'm trying to demonstrate the difference between our forums. It is not surprising that you dont get many problems on your forum ... yet! One day if your forum continues to grow you will.

How much porn do you get on your forum? Or viagra, or get rich quick schemes? We get about 50 posts of any of the previous a day.

When man first walked the earth we all lived in caves and did what we liked, but as our population grew we developed laws to keep things in order

 

[cjd]

Fair enough, ours is a relatively specialist forum and I hope it stays that way - it's mainly a support page for users - but in a previous life I ran a business that had a forum of 200,000 users; mainly male teenagers too - with no real problems either. (My dad is bigger than your dad, so there )

You seem to be saying that your main issue is spam? We get the Viagra into the support email but it's relatively rare to see one on the forum - so far the spam we get there is industry related.

Are the spammers managing to bi-pass image verification and registration?

 

[bwglaw]

I can see where Ozzy is coming from especially with this being the most popular forum for business. I can see the direction this forum is taking and I can see a greater gap (a USP kind of gap) between this and other forums.

Many people are coming on here now just, and mostly for the quality of advice given whether it be legal, accounts, IT etc

To maintain the above the forum has to be under constant development as it is becoming a specialist forum for businesses.

 

[andysv1k]

I think the mods should be taken into consideration with this too. (not saying you havnt ozzy, i meant other users opinions more.)

I presume atleast one of these options will inlvove more work for them?

I was really suprised to hear you get so much junk posting going on, my main forum i run is not on this scale but in 11k or so posts, not one has been unsolicited spam. Perhaps im just lucky!

I would tend to say the 3 strikes then out rule. As those slightly more dodgy members that come along every so often quickly draw attention to themselves, so it shouldnt be too difficult to weed out the good from bad users.

Andy.

 

[bwglaw]

I would suggest that somehow you stick to a system generated solution as opposed to a subjective solution which will only create disagreements. If that makes sense?

Jonathan

 

[Ozzy]

I think the mods should be taken into consideration with this too. (not saying you havnt ozzy, i meant other users opinions more.)

This is why I like the rating option, because it could remove some of the responsability from the mods, and ultimately turn these forums into a self policing forum (sort of).

I think the reason these forums get more spam than hobbyist sites is because business men and women are more lucrative to spam than teenages and the likes. I'm just concious that the mods spend so much of their free time dealing with spammers.

 

[fastfences]

Hi Ozzy,
It's heartening to see that you've adopted the goldcntrsteve format of postwriting, informative, probing and lengthy!!

It seems that most means of 'censoring' are able to be bypassed. Whatever you structure and introduce will obviously be in the forum Terms and Conditions. But do we read them or just tick the box? The latter for me! A spammer certainly isn't going to read them.

For this reason, I favour the 3 strikes rule. Sure, we can make a mistake once, maybe even twice, but there'd be no excuse for a third contravention. Without being patronising (and you know I'm not that sort of a person) I believe you're more than tolerant with 'borderline' cases of newer members. The 3 strikes rule endorses such 'tolerance' albeit limited, and then 'sinks in the boot!' This, in my view, is the way forward.

Cheers, Nigel

 

[creospace]

3 strike system is fair enoguh, in fact all options have their merrits and negatives.

My question would then be 'What constitutes a strike'? Will it be black and white or a touch of grey?

With rating it can be abused but if you kept the rating to the mature members of the forum say 100 posts plus or what ever (i was thinking more 250) and it has to be 2 members rating then you you can keep some objectivity on it.

 

[Rusty]

Difficult one, I opted for the Probation option, but feel it should be a significant length of time not amount of posts. If someone has joined for the purpose of receiving and giving advice and support then they won't mind hanging around. If they joined just to advertise their wares then they won't bother. If it is based on the amount of posts someone has to make to get the privileges then we just get people bumping up their posts. What we like to see is quality not quantity.

 

[cjd]

Basic Spammers (Nigerian frauds/Vigra/stock scams), as you say don't care about forum rules, neither do they care where they go - they'll go anywhere their bots can find. A fastidious sign-up process usually does for them - I'm not clear how those guys get through.

Individual and boring opportunist spammers can be dealt with behind the scenes with straightforward warnings, deletions and IP barring; us punters don't need to know anything about it really. This is a business site not a co-operative.

 

[Cornish Steve]

It's heartening to see that you've adopted the goldcntrsteve format of postwriting, informative, probing and lengthy!!

No. Thankfully, Ozzy is much more to the point than I am!

I like the option of allowing established members to rate new members. This helps to reduce the load on the moderators. If mods had to review every message posted by new members, the workload would be tedious and overwhelming. Long-term members know how the forums work and, by combining ratings, would soon make a collective assessment of new members.

I suspect that Ozzy and friends spend a lot of time behind the scenes each day cleaning this forum of spam. We don't see it, so we don't appreciate the hard work they do, and it must be frustrating.

The other approaches would work too. In the end, the mods should decide what is best for them.

 

[creospace]

us punters don't need to know anything about it really.

There is a small contingency of expats that frequent this forum, do be aware of that! Take Steve above he is US based.

 

[cjd]

That's 'us' as in 'we' not 'us' as in 'US'!

ie we punters don't need to know anything about it really; my slang grammar again

 

[creospace]

Ah! Reads both ways you see! Thanks for clarification.

 

[Donnash]

I think the 15 posts rule is fine, you need something to preventing spammers using the forum. Another forum I belong too has a 30 days AND 30 posts rule - thats a bit excessive!

 

[JustOneUK]

I'm just concious that the mods spend so much of their free time dealing with spammers.

It sounds like you need more mods. How many are there?

 

[cjd]

I would have thought that that you need to be finding ways of making it easier for new members to join and post - making rules that make it harder and introducing punishemnts seems counter-intuitive to me.

Spam problems are best dealt with with technology and good moderation - and you seem to have both here; I'm just not seeing a problem that needs fixing yet.

 

[Urban Space]

I've gone for 'Introduce the rating system.' I think that it'll take some of the pressure off the mods who already do a fantastic job =]

Liam