The recent SallyStar trainwreck illustrates one problem with allowing Guest members to post. A Guest who turns out to be a troll, a sock puppet, or just an egregious jerk, can generate a lot of commotion before the mods and admins have a chance to deal with him or her.
A proposal that I believe would vastly improve the situation: instead of allowing Guest members to post for x days, allow them to post x messages, regardless of the elapsed time. For example, you could say that a Guest can post 20 messages. If that Guest posts 20 times in the first two hours, he or she has to pay up to continue posting.
If you set it fairly low, like maybe 10 free posts, you could almost stop worrying about sock puppets entirely - the sheer hassle of creating a new identity after posting only 10 times wouldn’t be worth the effort (or maybe it would - I guess a sock puppet is, by definition, a fairly obsessive individual!).
I’m pretty sure that the software won’t allow us to do either of those things. That’s the impression I got when we discussed this some months ago in modmail. I won’t swear to this, however.
The obvious drawback is that a guest could start a thread, say in Great Debates, where the discussion got lively, and an arbitrary limit on posts per day, or total posts, would lock out the guest in the middle of the debate. Or the guest could have a lot of info to offer in several different threads, and not be able to Fight Ignorance in more than a few spots before being shut off.
Either scenario would lead to frustration for potential new members. We’re already discouraging some with the subscription charge. A posting limit, IMO, would keep away even more new members who’d be well worth the trouble of dealing with the occasional idjit – which we get from time to time anyway.
Then too… I shouldn’t confess this… but now and then it’s fun to have a free-for-all pileon like Sally’s. When it’s clear what we’re dealing with. When the Powers That Be have been alerted and we’re all just counting down the time.
Yes, I know. But sometimes it’s just too tempting… like succumbing to an overwhelming urge for, say, chocolate…
Hey, it conjured upReeder putting his arms around a despondent Sam Stone’s shoulders to say “Don’t worry, no one thinks she represents your side”. Would you really have wanted to miss that?
And Lynn, I figured that ability wasn’t built into the software, at least not this version. Something for the wish-list, maybe.
Ultimately, EddyTeddyFreddy and Ponster may be right - the price of attracting new, interesting posters is having to endure the occasional onslaught by a moron or two (or, around school holidays, a handful of them!).
nonono. a reasonable limit (imho two to three hundred) on total posts (not per day) would be way better than the current time limit imposed. anyone who’s involved enough to post 300 times will be too far gone to refuse the low, low price of $14.95. (not even fifteen dollars!!)
Generally speaking, these train-wreck types are caught and handled pretty quickly. OK, this was a weekend when lots of Moderators were out enjoying life, but still, the critter under discussion was only around for, what, less that 24 hours?
Considering how long some of our less savory politicians last in office, I have to say, that aint too bad.
I hadn’t even seen nor heard of this particular train wreck (in GD, I take it?), but I have seen plenty of good contributions (both questions and answers) posted by new guests, and even some who have subscribed in the time after the charter period. From my point of view, it looks like the good newbies are far outweighing the bad ones.
This particular newbie was too moronic to be contained by a single thread, or even a single forum! Just do a search on the name, and you’ll get the flavor.
On balance, though, both you and C K are probably correct. We’ve actually been remarkably free of pest infestations of late, and most of the newbies have clearly done a fair amount of lurking before signing up, so they play well with others.
I made this same suggestion to Tuba a few months ago, via email, and she told me that, as Lynn suggests above, the software definitely cannot operate that way.
Though I’m loath to admit it, you might also consider that while our guests can add their particular flair and good questions when they are around whether they decide to join or not …
and not to make for a hassle to the Mods …
but now and then a single schmuck getting through for a brief period is not at all a bad thing.
No matter how stupidly they act and whatever idiotic threads they decide to start, their “false pretences” invariably not only give us a question to discuss, no matter how inane, and a particular act of behavior or instance that galvanizes us as a comunity.
Fighting ignorance will go no further if we wallow in stagnation, and the brief interruption of some bozo every now and then will help to point that out.
Our Mods do a frickin’ amazing job, and we as members are on the lookout for the sundry types. Going so far as the OP is suggesting is not at all necessary.
No, although vBulletin will not provide direct support for modified scripts. There isn’t any “warranty”, per se. There are several communities that do provide some level support for script hacks, however. From the vBulletin FAQ:
One of the main reasons they don’t like hacking the scripts is because it’s all too easy to wipe out a database accidentally if a bit of code goes wonky. Trust me, I know this to be true. :smack:
