This could quite possibly be an extremely unpopular opinion, but please bear with me.
School’s out for summer. The nation’s kids have tons of time on their hands, and an internet connection with little supervision. The SDMB has been the subject of a lot of little trolls who have little concern for netiquette and basic consideration for decorum and appropriate behavior.
I would imagine the moderators and admins of the board look forward to this time of year with very little glee and anticipation, due simply to the volume of incoming new members that, to a large extent, are going to troll around and be general nuisances.
However, there have been several examples over the years of great new young posters who fit in wonderfully and contribute in a variety of ways.
Would a waiting period of, say, 3-5 days deter the unwanteds from returning, but be short enough to retain for those who actually want to be here? Is that feasible or against any board rules, or contrary to the board’s mission?
You seem to have given this a good deal of thought. Could you be a little more quantitative about what you mean by “a lot”? How many little trolls do we get per day?
No idea. It’s been a year (obviously) since the beginning of last summer. Plus, I’d imagine that there are a lot of people headed off at the pass by the mods before they even get to post (usually sockpuppets and returning banned). I’m sure a mod could expand on the increased workload (if there actually is one) at this time of year if they saw fit.
We’ve discussed in the past holding registrations until they can be approved by staff. There are two main reasons we have decided to continue offering open registration. 1) We feel that people who come by to make their first post a question or comment on Cecil’s column(s), would be dissuaded by a waiting period - and there is indeed a goodly number of people who make their first, and perhaps only, post(s) in that forum. 2) It’s a lot of work for someone to vet thirty or forty registrations everyday. And how could we tell, from just the registration information, the original idiots (as opposed to the recurrent idiots - those we know pretty well) from people who genuinely wish to contribute?
You know, I can’t even remember what the protocol is for signing up anymore. But I do know that most other message boards I’ve signed up to have an e-mail confirmation that’s sent to you. Wouldn’t there be a way to delay that e-mail by several days, thus eliminating any extra duties for the mods?
But, I completely see your point regarding the CCC. I would imagine it extends to GQ to a lesser extent.
I actually think a waiting period of two hours or so would head off the worst of the troublemakers. But that’d still discourage the CCC posters UncleBeer mentioned.
Back when this was on AOL, I remember wanting to hide at Christmas time when all those fresh new computers would be plugged in and their owners had no more creativity than to go to AOL and act stupid.
Recall it took a couple weeks for the nonsense to die off each year, so we’d need at least a 2-week no-posting period for new users, and yes, that would annoy and scare off a whole lot of people.
Since information on who registers isn’t made public to the rest of the board, it’s tough for us to know how many “kids” are signing up during the beginning of summer (or, for that matter, during Christmas or their spring break). Is this number exceptionally high? Is it unworkable?
Many message boards do require that the person be approved before he or she may post. Many do not, too. This message board is not moderated to that extent, and I suspect it won’t be unless we suddenly become inundated with scores and scores of desperate preteens looking for ways to hack into NORAD or something. But you gotta admit, the vast majority of youngsters who do sign on here and post seem to be very well behaved, not to mention whip smart.
