New members system feedback
This discussion was created from comments split from: Welcome new Members - Mega Thread.
Context: https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/239296/#Comment_239296
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RESULT OF THIS THREAD:
Context: https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/239296/#Comment_239296
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RESULT OF THIS THREAD:
ok settings updated.
Changes:
Auto Ban hammer at -7
Auto-promote to standard member at +7
3rd question added "Are you human" and the field name is 2+2, so if anyone answers with 4, they are a shit bot.
People who are "New members" cannot see offers or domain sales until promoted, and cannot start new threads, only respond to existing ones.
upvotes for posts on other threads count, not just upvotes on the new member thread so the more they take part, the more chace they have of getting a quick promotion.
Changes:
Auto Ban hammer at -7
Auto-promote to standard member at +7
3rd question added "Are you human" and the field name is 2+2, so if anyone answers with 4, they are a shit bot.
People who are "New members" cannot see offers or domain sales until promoted, and cannot start new threads, only respond to existing ones.
upvotes for posts on other threads count, not just upvotes on the new member thread so the more they take part, the more chace they have of getting a quick promotion.
Comments
I like how we went from using this approval method to filter bots out, to people downvoting users with whom they don't agree and not allowing them to participate.
3 downvotes because user mentioned he wants to host something politically incorrect. Feeling like on Reddit all over again, and downvotes in this case get you banned.
I mean isn't the whole point of handing it "to the community" is to make it possible for "the community" to be lacking in enthusiasm for new users who are pre-emptively declaring they want to break the "don't be a dick" rule?
I would argue that there is a considerable gulf between "politically incorrect" and "I want to run an actively and explicitly racist site". Happily, the system is built so that my opinion doesn't carry any more weight than yours.
Split the discussion as I don't feel putting the discussion in the new member thread is the right place for it.
@treesmokah what do you suggest instead? as I have said a few times, I am very open to suggestions and change.
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Sorry, yeah I should have avoided cluttering that thread :-(
I dunno man. First rule of LES is don't be a dick. If you're racist, you're a dick.
Michael from DragonWebHost & OnePoundEmail
Well, from my perspective, I saw it, I decided not to vote, simply because there was not enough information.
You don't know what you don't know in these circumstances; maybe it's a website about countering racism, and as such contains examples of racist material, or 5 other things. Also, it could be an era-specific material archive showing toys and packaging from the 40's ... if you know you know.
But the point of this thread was more to do with the criticism of the new member system in general, the only thing i can really take from the comment is that @treesmokah seems not to like it and being like reddit in terms of function is a bad thing, but no mention of specifically how to improve it.
I am all ears, and this is genuine, not in a snarky, I am an admin, listen to me way; if something is wrong, let's fix it, personally I also get pissed off at the ultra woke adgenda that has an undertone in reddit too, but you know, they must be doing something right in terms of platform function to be where they are, just because you take on board some bits of their way if doing things does not make you politicolly aligned with them.
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Forum rules don't apply to off-site behavior. What the user is hosting, is up to him.
He doesn't have to be racist on the forum, to host a racist website. And won't break any rule this way.
If you would like to extend the rule to off-site behavior, I would love to hear how you plan to do that.
I don't see how can you enforce rules, especially the subjective ones like "Don't be a dick" to what the user does in their own time, and off the site.
Not to mention, hosting something "Racist" doesn't make you one. Like @AnthonySmith mentioned, there are even toys which would be considered racist by today's standards.
To be perfectly honest, I think the best idea would be to go back to how it was handled before. Staff approval.
I have more trust in staff doing the right thing(being neutral), than random and unvetted people who clearly are emotional about what they see on the Internet.
But that's my opinion.
Meh; they would appear to not be the only ones getting emotional about what they see on the internet. But the whole point about a threshold is that if it's just an over-reaction by a couple of "random and unvetted" people, that's not enough to ban a new member.
I note you don't seem to care about the previous two newbies who got banned for, as far as I can tell, one of them re-phrasing the other (possibly using an AI) when faced with a demand to justify their interest in the forum. That seemed even more arbitrary.
And that's the point of a quorum. We all have opinions; it's only if a chunk of people express it that anything happens. If you're worried about the "random and unvetted", cap it to people with 100+ karma; that's semi-vetted at least (although actually didn't @AnthonySmith already do that)?
Everyone is racist to some extent. Only thing is whether it's socially acceptable racism or unacceptable.
Btw, I upvoted the member (cause i didn't read). Changed my vote to downvote. We have enough socially unacceptable racist people here already
25 discussed 100, decided to wait to see how 25 goes before making a decision, you dont know what you dont know until you do
If it was just me doing approvals, which it was for a while, being 100% honest, I would have just clicked decline, because honestly, I can't be bothered with the potential forum drama, maybe that tells you something about where I am mentally these days, I try and be neurtral, but ultimatley, I am human, naturally I have bias and flaws, I am not always the best judge of things, I have had to eat my words here many times, and I never feel the need to be right now, happy to be seen as the dick, realise it, and appologise.
I do consider myself generally tolerant of those with different outlooks and opinions; I would rather find the common ground than hyperfocus on the 1 thing that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I am also often dumbfounded by people; "I am looking for a host that allows racist material" without qualification of any kind is a bit tone deaf, and that is why I would expect drama, just the same as I would react to someone that said "I want a host that supports storage of stolen crypto wallets" < or insert something similar that follows for you here.
So if I understand, the issue is a question of trust in the people who can vote to be subjective/neautral, and apply some critical thinking, so the only practical suggestion I can make is to increase the number of votes both ways or in 1 direction before the action is taken to get a broader spectrum of views required to make the decision.
I will say it again as I have said it before multiple times now: the changes made are to improve self-moderation within LES, they won't be good for everyone, but on the whole, the plan is to reduce friction and delay. And the reason for that is that, number-wise, LES seems to be circling the drain, and there is nothing sadder than a dead forum with 6 people taking part until one day it's no one, if we make the approval fully manual, people can be waiting days for membership, and when that happens, most never log in again.
It's pretty obvious to me at least that the new membership approval system is at least reducing that friction; new membership overall is down 66% over the last 30 days, while new < 30-day members who then post in a topic is up 141%
My interpretation of this is that the new filtering methods are blocking way more bots who are a useless waste of database space, and people are now more willing to engage as the registration breaks the ice more than it did, and the access, albeit partial and more limited, is instant. Switching back to manual approvals would take away from this.
In the words of Joe Biden.... "Aaaaanyway", I was interrupted multiple times when writing this by the dog throwing up, the neighbours out the back when cleaning that up, and then a delivery and then needing to use the toilet, so now I can't really remember my point or the feeling behind it, and I am just typing words, so I am going to stop typing, I think the point was, we cant go back to how it was, it is damaging for the eco system, happy to take practical suggestions on what it could be instead.
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I upvoted the user because he seemed to be a real human. He's probably an asshole but I couldn't know that for sure. Maybe he's only a hosting racist shit because it's profitable. He's still a dick but that's real world and he might be a wonderful addition to the site. I just didn't know.
Sadly, reflects the world we live in .....
Circling back on this - I would imagine that if you were running an anti-racism website, or a vintage toy website, you'd probably phrase it differently, along the lines of "an understanding provider" or "a provider who can handle potentially controversial sites". To jump straight to "doesn't have a problem with racist speech" shouts a very different intent to me.
You could perhaps consider stretching the ban threshold to 10 downvotes instead of 5, but I'm not even sure that's necessary - the poll stayed open long enough for us to have this debate...
I just downvoted this to save his time - there are no LES providers openly admitting to allowing racists speech websites so he won't find anything here - no need to waste time scrolling for offers here.
I am a nice guy, okey?!
I also downvoted the other guy that talks about AI, name himself his website selling AI tokens, talks about AI, says he want personal account and won't sell things until he become a provider and talks about AI. While looking at all this text is AI generated.
Haven't bought a single service in VirMach Great Ryzen 2022 - 2023 Flash Sale.
Speaking of which, have you seen what's going on in UK? I hear the white skinned folks are refusing treatment from any non-white skinned people in UK hospitals, even calling them slurs like "monkeys" or "dirty foreigners"!!! WTF is wrong with those people? Are they really sick? I mean when I am sick, i dont care who the doctor/nurse/staff member is. As long as they treat me, I am happy!
News link: https://news.sky.com/story/nhs-staff-experiencing-unconscionable-levels-of-racist-abuse-survey-finds-13569575
I don't generally follow UK news but it's not geographically limited sadly. We have those fuckwits here too.
Yeah, honestly I just don't know; people are very concerned with being right or wrong and no middle ground these days, so I get the Reddit criticism, but this place is not Reddit.
From my perspective, this is now the 5th time discussing the new member system in an open thread, and it is at least the 100th time someone has made a comment about it, of all elements of LES, this is the one I feel has to be as "right" as possible, so I will revisit it 100 times if need be.
I don't feel any more qualified than anyone else here to decide who can be here, and I knew I needed to reduce friction, as I can see that we don't know who is a bot and we don't know who just decided never to come back when they got full access, or it was an automated registration; either way, manual approval.
Since the latest iteration, my opinion is so far so good; this 1 blip, which, frankly, I would be surprised if it did not cause a "blip" but I am happy to listen to feedback or suggestions so it's always good to have threads like this one; it does not guarantee change unless it shows change is needed.
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Agree to disagree. Every time I wind up on the same side as @treesmokah I have to spend the next hour reviewing my life choices. ;-)
As a white British skinhead who has been in and out of hospital a lot recently, I can confirm I have called no one a monkey. Don't listen to Sky News, it is just a click factory.
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All Skin heads are bald, not all bald people are Skinheads. ( heh heh )
What's the Zen phrase.... even a broken clock is right twice a day. (meant in good humour)
As much as it was a joke, it is the point I was trying to make its better to have a veriatey of opinions making the call than 1, as it represents the broader view of the forum and if that is anti racist, then people who are tone deaf to that wont give the place an unwanted atomosphere, if the opposite is true, then the opposite will happen.
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I don't think most people would do that. But a certain group maybe doing that. I saw it first on social media. When googled for official source, got the sky news and guardian news links. Knowing how racist some people are (regardless of race/religion/skin-color) I don't doubt the news, but I do suspect it may be "sensationalized" to generate views/clicks.
70 million people, some of them are dicks, they need an LES style entry system to hospitals, problem solved.
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I mean to be fair, there has been a tiny minority of idiots who object to "foreigners" treating them since the birth of the NHS and probably before that. Sadly, most medical staff are too professional to just say "fair enough mate" and kick them out of the valuable hospital bed.
I meant worldwide, not just limited to UK...
I would love to see that. Isn't that how the whole "evolution" happened? "You are racist and refuse to be treated? Well, you go extinct."
At least I try to treat everyone as if they are an idiot or asshole....
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
I guess I missed out on something. I would probably consider someone asking such a question as a litmus test.
At one point in time I created a free image host which people abused to no end tormenting each other. On the surface level I didn't really care but then I received an email from one of the kids who was being picked on by other kids at her school and I decided to just discontinue the service rather than have to moderate or otherwise deal with it.
Was it created to explicitly torment others? No where things likely uploaded to it which could have been considered racist? Possibly - I didn't monitor it. But had my host expressly forbid such things from being hosted, I could have lost my account.
Just food for thought.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
On a more serious note;
Another option to the new member situation is that we accept all new applicants, since we now have the possibility to "hide" offers, require upvote to see.
Limit the new members to certain areas/categories of the forum and make them interact with the rest of us to earn Karma, and when they reach a certain level of Karma, can upvote offers and be a "full" member of the site.
I'm writing this while I'm rewriting a letter in Swedsih, so my thoughts might be all with me in text. But its an idea, maybe worth investigating more?
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
While they are "new members", they can view and respond to anything except offer posts; it takes +5 karma to become a standard user.
Thats how it already works kind of?
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I'm fighting an urge to politisperg and respond to this. But I will spare you some unsavory words.
With all the things going down in the UK, Brits(real ones) are the least "racist" group there is. And frankly, they shouldn't be.
Yeah, but not forcing a vote on whether they should be accepted as members or not.
Perhaps raising that limit to 10?
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg