Since Merit feature being introduced, I think there are a lot of improvements on better part of the forum community's overall posts, but IMO, it is not necessarily effective against spam accounts. There are lots of ICO projects suddenly flooded with "wow, what a nice project, will follow!" posts made by newbies with date-jumping post history, posted at every several minutes that serve as an bumping accounts. I tried to look for some examples to give a better understanding, but I can't give a good ones. Nevertheless, I think most of us know what kind of posts I mean.
Without any intention to blame anyone, I think the situation are caused by a rather simple steps to create new account. The bumping and spam accounts can roam freely knowing that if one of their alts being banned, they only need minutes to create a new ones. Even with IP restriction policy, where if someone signing up from a known abusive IP, there are ways to bypass the restrictions.
I had an idea, what if we introduce a way to sign up via invitation code?
It works much like membership on private torrent site where new members will have to have an invitation code to register. This registration code(s) can only be given by existing members in reflect to their rank (and in a way, by merit, as merit are required to raise rank) or by DT or mods, like
- Full member has 2 invitation code
- Senior member has 3 invitation code (and so on)
- DT has 5 invitation code
- Mods... well, in my concept, Mods are giving "invitation Giveaway" on certain events (again, much like those private torrent)
Or maybe there will be this special group like Merit-Source where they have steady flow of invitation code?
The idea is: if the registration is rather difficult, it will possibly contribute on minimizing creation of new accounts and account abuse.
To complicate thing, suppose such idea above is applicable, I think a system where we can track who registered with whose invitation code will greatly helps, as it means the existing members need to be carefully giving their code because it can be tracked back to them. Means, if Sergey00-Smiley who invited by Holydarkness do an abuse or scamming members, it is not impossible that Holydarkness will bear a consequence of his action, maybe he'll get a red trust for inviting a scammers? Or get a banning together with Servey00-Smiley?
The bad side, it might encourage irresponsible members to sell their invitation code, but if it was tied to their membership and traceable, with the dire consequence ahead if the one buy their code do an abuse they will also get consequences, I think most will reconsider before selling. And oh, also, it will greatly decrease the number of new members on this forum (which, essentially destroy the concept of open forum), but given the outcome, and the idea where Invitation-Source and Mods can give invitation(s) to those they deemed fit... I'd like to know what other think about this.
p.s.: apology if similar idea already proposed once, kindly point it to me and I'll delete this one. I can't find any, though. Also, will move to respective board if I post on the wrong board, this is the first time I use this board.
