newbie jail

[mocacinno]

I'd like to propose (once again) to re-institute newbie jail... I know it's unfriendly, i know it discourages new users from joining our community... But i'm in favor of a newbie jail opposed to evil points because i guess most "real" newbies would rather make a couple good posts and be let out of jail opposed to paying a "fine" just because they share an ip block with a spammer...


I know this has been discussed quite a few times in the distant past, but today i saw a lot of my historic, technical, posts getting bumped by scammers and i got so frustrated i wanted to vent... So bare with me
I have opened a new topic since the historic ones discussing newbie jail are quite old, and the circumstances *might* have changed since then...


To give you an idear about how bad it currently is, i decided to analyse the last 200!!! posts from the patrol page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190514091449/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol

I've assigned a label to each and every of the last 200 posts and counted them (the label was attached according to my gut feeling, some labels might be open to discussion):




I've found 9 posts out of 200 (that's less than 5%) posts containing ANY value, and only 2 posts (that's 1% that would have triggered me to give a reply if i would have been interested in the topic that was being discussed). This signal to noise ratio is plain bad... Whatever tool the mods are using is clearly insufficient... I know, the mods are doing what they can, they do a lot of good, but i wondered if it wouldn't be better to just lock up the newbies untill they've proven their merits, that way the mods can concentrate on moderating "real" members instead of nuking spammers and scammers.

I don't even think the rules should be that strict... Register a new account => newbie jail (a subforum whose posts are not shown on the main page "by default").
Gain 1 merit => get out of jail
Pay a fee => get out of jail
Convince a moderator by asking a real question => moderator moves your post to the correct subforum and lets you out of jail
Convince 3 sr+ members to let you out of jail => get out of jail
...

I know, i know... It has been done, it has been discussed, the new forum is coming, there are drawbacks to the system, it'll be a lot of work for the mods, some members might never get out of jail, non-english speakers will have a disadvantage,... But these spammers/scammers are ruining our community and i think the energy that will be put into filtering out the few good newbies that deserve to get out of jail will be less than the energy of finding these nonsense posts in all subforums scattered all over the place

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[Steamtyme]

When you describe it I don't see this as an unfriendly step. Let's consider it more like the tutorial level games used to have. This newbie jail could finally serve the purpose the "Welcome Letter" was going to, we could essentially force new members to learn the rules & etiquette of the forum. Maybe even prevent these early plagiarism choices people make then get sideswipped by years down the road (not excussing the plagiarism) . It might even encourage some of those that would have become generic shitposters to broaden their horizons to overcome this first challenge.

[TMAN]

newbie jail with a basic English test - if failed they are relegated to local section only.

[hilariousandco]

Theymos has said that he probably won't ever reinstate a newbie jail so it's almost certainly not going to happen. Doing so would just make those users spam the newbie jail instead and restricts all the other genuine users. In the past I've suggested that all new users are essentially shadowbanned until mod-approved so at least this would stop a lot of the bots but I think there are other ways we can deal with spam that we should look at as well rather than blanket restrictions over everyone.

[mocacinno]

Theymos has said that he probably won't ever reinstate a newbie jail so it's almost certainly not going to happen. Doing so would just make those users spam the newbie jail instead and restricts all the other genuine users. In the past I've suggested that all new users are essentially shadowbanned until mod-approved so at least this would stop a lot of the bots but I think there are other ways we can deal with spam that we should look at as well rather than blanket restrictions over everyone.

To bad
Sure, they would spam newbie jail, but the only people they'd bother would be other newbies that are still in jail instead of everybody.

The shadowbanning might actually be a good idear, i like it 

[fronti]

The shadowbanning might actually be a good idear, i like it 

but bring the idea of censorship and also there will be a lot of workloads for the admins/approvers.
But the idea is not that bad.

[mocacinno]

but bring the idea of censorship and also there will be a lot of workloads for the admins/approvers.
But the idea is not that bad.

It's not really censorship.. They can still post, but they're confined to a subforum whose posts aren't listed on the main page... A non-newbie could still visit the subforum or use the searchfunction to find the posts made by the jailed newbies.

As for the workload: the mods are already playing whack-a-mole with these spammers/scammers... They only difference is that these spammy posts would be confined to 1 single subforum, thus decreasing the amount of effort for mods (at least, that's my pov)

But since Theymos already said he would't re-introduce newbie jail is't merely a philosophical discussion anyways

[TopTort777]

I don't even think the rules should be that strict... Register a new account => newbie jail (a subforum whose posts are not shown on the main page "by default").
Gain 1 merit => get out of jail
Pay a fee => get out of jail
Convince a moderator by asking a real question => moderator moves your post to the correct subforum and lets you out of jail
Convince 3 sr+ members to let you out of jail => get out of jail
...

I would like to "put my 2 cents" about your methods of going out from jail.

* Gain 1 merit => get out of jail - could be a good idea, but would be totally ruined by merit abusers
* Pay a fee => get out of jail - wont help, rich shitposters will easily sneak out
* Convince a moderator by asking a real question => moderator moves your post to the correct subforum and lets you out of jail - wont that make forum mods overloaded with work ?
* Convince 3 sr+ members to let you out of jail => get out of jail - there are a lot of Sr+ Members that got their high rank by making reports and shitpots. Just a newbie with enough activity.

I know it is easy to critisize, that why I'll try to post my vision how to improve situation.

First - why newbies shitpost? From my point of view to get enough posts for signature campaigns. Maybe bounty managers should change rules from posts/week made to merit/week earned.

It will be easier to check. Instead of reading/translating 10-200 posts, just check merit history whether they earned fair or not. Plus it will reveal merit abusers on the forum

And about putting users to "jail" from start. Somehow it sounds wrong. Users just got registred, and already being accused for shitposting

[r1s2g3]

First - why newbies shitpost? From my point of view to get enough posts for signature campaigns. Maybe bounty managers should change rules from posts/week made to merit/week earned.

Newbies do not have signature so shitposting for signature campaign do not make sense to me. I see many newbies posting plagiarized content in attempt to gain merit.

Anyway , question to OP:

OP, how you will deal with newbies that are stuck with some issues and just join this forum to get their problem resolved?
Don't you think they should get help as soon as possible instead of moderator first white listing them so that they can be heard.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

newbie jail with a basic English test - if failed they are relegated to local section only.

I'd love this more than you'd know.  People seem to think that non-English speakers are somehow discriminated against, or that they're thought of as stupid because they can't write English to save their lives, but that isn't the case.  The problem is that they're being paid to write in a language they have no competency in, and it makes it infuriating for the rest of us who want to read well-written posts.  The bottom line is that members shouldn't be writing in sections where they don't know the language unless they have something significant to contribute.

But yeah....Theymos would never go for such a suggestion.  It's wishful thinking on our parts.

Theymos has said that he probably won't ever reinstate a newbie jail so it's almost certainly not going to happen.

That was the first thing I thought when I read the OP.  I recall this idea being brought up last year or so, and it was immediately shot down.  I was not around when the newbie jail existed, but I'd love to have seen how it worked.

Sure, they would spam newbie jail, but the only people they'd bother would be other newbies that are still in jail instead of everybody.

The shadowbanning might actually be a good idear, i like it 

To the limit of my understanding of how it would work, I agree with the bolded part above.  Since most noobs are spammers in training, it might encourage a portion of them to give up their career before it even starts and that would be pretty sweet. 

As for the shadow banning idea, I'd be interested to hear more details.  It might be at least worth trying.

[TopTort777]

First - why newbies shitpost? From my point of view to get enough posts for signature campaigns. Maybe bounty managers should change rules from posts/week made to merit/week earned.

Newbies do not have signature so shitposting for signature campaign do not make sense to me. I see many newbies posting plagiarized content in attempt to gain merit.

My bad, forgot about that. Ok, Jr. Members, Cooper members and newbies in the past

[mocacinno]

Anyway , question to OP:

OP, how you will deal with newbies that are stuck with some issues and just join this forum to get their problem resolved?
Don't you think they should get help as soon as possible instead of moderator first white listing them so that they can be heard.

Well, the newbie jail should be patrolled... So if a newbie asks a legitimate question, the newbie could be let out of jail and his topic can be moved to the correct subforum... We like people that ask legitimate questions, they don't belong in jail..

Sure, it's a drawback, but i still think it would beat the system of letting them roam free and then send in the moderators to remove their shitpost from every nook and cranny of the forum after they have already caused damage to good threads...

[HCP]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol

I didn't realise just how bad it was...

I'd certainly have no problem with a newbie jail, although that wouldn't help prevent things like the issue we had yesterday with hacked/sold accounts suddenly waking up and shilling fake Electrum wallet updates in locked threads.

Not sure the idea of "Convince 3 sr+ members to let you out of jail => get out of jail" is a workable idea... lord knows there are gangs "hobbyist groups" of bounty spammers at work... it would be relatively trivial for them to work around this requirement.

Also, I agree that the shadowbanning concept is something that should possibly be explored...