Please add a approval of posts system upon registeration

[Zedpastin]

This is how the system should work:

1. User registration
2. User posts to whatever sub forum they would like too
3. The users post isn't displayed publicly
4. The post enters a queue which can be accepted or rejected

The idea behind this suggestion is to prevent people abusing how easy it is to register on this forum and spam their advertisement, viruses or whatever their malicious purposes are for registering. We recently had spambots register and were spreading their links to advertise their service this could have been avoided with this suggestion.

When the post is posted it appears publicly to the member who posted it but not to the rest of the forum. The post will then enter a queue which staff members get to accept or reject. Rejecting the post will in turn delete it and send a notification to the member to notify them that their post was deleted. This message should not mention that each post has to be approved before being submitted but I guess this will become public knowledge sooner rather than later.

In addition to staff members handling these posts I think we should open up the possibility of merit sources dealing with them too. Merit sources are not required to do it but they can volunteer their services if they would like too. After all merit sources are suppose to be on the look out for good posts and this would in turn allow them to merit good first posts and reject posts they think is spam.

I think this approval system should be in place until the member has either been whitelisted by a member of staff or received at least 1 merit. What do you guys think of this?

[Csmiami]

It did sound familiar at first...

Just keep reporting them, but there's an infestation of them for sure. It's times like these when I wish all new accounts were shadowbanned until their first post or so has been verified.

Personally, I see this looks a poor solution; admins/mods would get thousands of posts to verify, on top of their already existing workload.

Spam will always happen, but the luckily, every member can report it, so that mods can nuke the accounts.

[tbct_mt2]

Theymos states that he does not has intention to bring Newbie Jail back. If there are things to do, it is to destroy the whole signature campaign industry, that theymos really does not want to do.

3. The users post isn't displayed publicly

Who will check those posts stay in queue?

4. The post enters a queue which can be accepted or rejected

[Bttzed03]

That would be unfair to newbies who needed the answer immediately. By the time the question has been approved for posting, there is a chance that answers will no longer become relevant to the OP. I have seen this case happen in a lot of facebook groups.

[AverageGlabella]

Its a good idea except consider all of the members who haven't yet got 1 merit its probably in the thousands I don't think the current moderators would be able to deal with that amount of posts a day. Considering the average member probably posts more than 5 posts a day and this forum being quite active. I'm not sure how many daily users we have here on the forum but I would think its over 30k members which aren't all ranked members.

Hoping the guys with the statistics can back up this claim and provide recently active members that have yet to earn 1 merit. Just think of how many posts are posted in the altcoin sub forum alone by bounty members etc. Often these aren't ranked members and some bounty campaigns require several updates a day.

[erikalui]

This feature is present in other forums but not here even though they allow multiple accounts to register from 1 IP. With the result we have such posts:

Zloader ID: A0RR20

Zloadr app ID: AZT1GA

Since the OP requires users to post their ID, newbies are creating accounts just to post it. The thread was locked earlier but they reopened it.

[AverageGlabella]

This feature is present in other forums but not here even though they allow multiple accounts to register from 1 IP. With the result we have such posts:

Zloader ID: A0RR20

Zloadr app ID: AZT1GA

Since the OP requires users to post their ID, newbies are creating accounts just to post it. The thread was locked earlier but they reopened it.

This is against the rules though they are offering an incentive to post by requiring members to post on their thread. I have now reported that thread so if anything this works in the favor of the OP's suggestion that if these were in a queue the moderators might see that this thread is requiring members to post proof of authentication and is offering an incentive to do it.

Looking at that thread they have also been registering many alt accounts and quoting the original topic to bump the thread further. 

[gentlemand]

Nice idea. Impossible to implement in reality. There's too many to handle.

Newbie jail was a reality when I joined. I think it should absolutely definitely make a comeback. It's automated, easy to understand and erases most problems. Lots of other forums have a similar system, but if it's not the owner's will then it won't happen.

[o_e_l_e_o]

According to Alex_Sr's thread here (Statistics of user registrations on Bitcointalk 2017-2019), we are currently looking at around 20,000 new accounts per month, but we were over ten times as high during the height of the bull run.

It is impossible to know how many of those accounts would have had their first post deleted under this new system. There is no way we would ban these accounts for making one poor post, and so it is impossible to quantify how many would go on to make a second, third, fourth, tenth, twentieth, etc. post which would also need to be reviewed under such a system before they were "whitelisted". There is obviously also accounts which are created and do not post.

Given all these unknowns, we can't know for sure how many posts the mods are going to have to deal with. Given the small number of newbies who earn even a single merit, I suspect that the vast majority would be making at least 5 or so posts before they were either whitelisted or they gave up. I would take a wild guess at the mods having to deal with somewhere around 3,000 or so posts a day, which I think is pretty unfeasible. This number would increase massively if we see another spike in registrations during the next bull run.

Regardless, theymos has been pretty clear in the past about his reluctance to re-introduce newbie jail or any other kind of blanket restriction on newbies, and I tend to agree with that. A system like this is also going to turn away a great deal many of good and interested newbies, and that's the last thing we want for the future of the forum.

Perhaps a better option to have dealt with the recent spam attack would be to give global mods or a slightly larger subset of the mods the ability to auto-ban all accounts posting a specific phrase or link.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Personally, I see this looks a poor solution; admins/mods would get thousands of posts to verify, on top of their already existing workload.

That's the reason why such a feature won't ever be implemented.  I've seen forums that do exactly what OP is suggesting, but they have far fewer members to deal with.  I forget the figure, but bitcointalk has multiple millions of registered users with thousands of new ones registering every month.  There's no way in hell mods would be able to approve posts.

Newbie jail was a reality when I joined. I think it should absolutely definitely make a comeback.

I wasn't around for that, but I've certainly heard about it.  And while I agree with you that it really ought to be brought back, I do believe I've read that Theymos isn't even considering it.  That's unfortunate, IMO.

[Welsh]

This is very similar to the shadow ban system that Hilariousandco has suggested a few times in the past. In theory its a great idea which would prevent spam being seen to the public eye, however whether we have enough resources to handle that amount of posts a day would be debatable. Despite reports not coming in as thick, and fast as a few months ago I would still say that amount of posts could be a little bit hard to deal with. We would likely need a few more moderators in each of the sections. There are still global moderators which have a dedicated section which could probably be optimized by adding a few more moderators to help them out, but only they really know how much additional help is needed.

I for one don't really like imposing restrictions on the majority just because of the minority is causing a few issues. These bot attacks are somewhat quickly dealt with as a community effort, and they aren't as popular as you might think at least to the scale of yesterday. I would have to agree with o_e_l_e_o that imposing to much restrictions is not beneficial to the forum as a whole.

Perhaps a better option to have dealt with the recent spam attack would be to give global mods or a slightly larger subset of the mods the ability to auto-ban all accounts posting a specific phrase or link.

I think the recent bot attack was pretty well dealt with, and a big part of that was down to Mitchell's bot. Reports have died down in recent months across the boards I would say, at least in the sections I moderate, and newbie reports have significantly died down. Although, there are still a few prominent users who are reporting fairly regular.

[Theb]

Your idea completely destroys what a forum should be. Can you just imagine how could you practice free speech in a forum when all of your posts will be subject for approval? You simply can't! all your replies will be subject to the moderators reviewing it and it would really depend on whether or not its “relevant” for them. We don't really need to adjust to spammers and plagiarizers and affect everyone in the forum, they are the ones who need to adjust for us that's why we have a report button and bans in placed for them.

[actmyname]

-snip-

You misunderstand what the intent is. It's similar to a Newbie jail, not a review process for all posts. The latter would be absolutely unsustainable with our current staff.Against spam attacks and whatnot, I think we still have the freedom to keep to a reactive approach since malicious traffic is not too common. Moreover, the community reaction to such types of attacks is usually quite swift.

Once we get truckloads of accounts posting about, we might want to insert a temporary lockdown mechanism, but I don't think theymos wants to go back to a permanent newbie jail.

[gentlemand]

but I don't think theymos wants to go back to a permanent newbie jail.

Are there any pronouncements you can link to where the exact reasons why are stated?

I was a bit surprised when I ended up in there on joining but I wasn't horrified or devastated. It was a little bit of a grind but eminently escapable. A lot of things look very different now of course but I'd be curious to know how it looks from the staff end.

[actmyname]

Are there any pronouncements you can link to where the exact reasons why are stated?

I was a bit surprised when I ended up in there on joining but I wasn't horrified or devastated. It was a little bit of a grind but eminently escapable. A lot of things look very different now of course but I'd be curious to know how it looks from the staff end.

Ask and you shall receive.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I think the recent bot attack was pretty well dealt with, and a big part of that was down to Mitchell's bot.

True, but his bot still identified over 4000 posts. I believe hilarious has said they were posting faster than he could nuke them. I would have thought it would be better to decentralize the ability to mass nuke so we don't have to count on a specific person being online at the right time, but hey, you obviously know more about the best set up than I do.

Reports have died down in recent months across the boards I would say, at least in the sections I moderate, and newbie reports have significantly died down.

I still report plagiarism and other serious offenses, but I took a break from reporting spam. It is pretty disheartening to see the same names showing up again and again and again. Kind of feels like a waste of time when for every post you report the spammer makes three more.

[ChemicalSpillage]

Reports have died down in recent months across the boards I would
I still report plagiarism and other serious offenses, but I took a break from reporting spam. It is pretty disheartening to see the same names showing up again and again and again. Kind of feels like a waste of time when for every post you report the spammer makes three more.

For me it's quite the opposite. Each post I report means one less reason for them to spam. They waste at least 10x as much time as I do when I report their post. I've already seen some users that I've reported seriously slow down on their spam. And for the return offenders? They'll get the picture.

[bluefirecorp_]

4. The post enters a queue which can be accepted or rejected

Only specific voices can be heard then. 

[Thirdspace]

I would have thought it would be better to decentralize the ability to mass nuke so we don't have to count on a specific person being online at the right time, but hey, you obviously know more about the best set up than I do.

interesting idea but how exactly to decentralize nuking? by voting on spammer?

It is pretty disheartening to see the same names showing up again and again and again. Kind of feels like a waste of time when for every post you report the spammer makes three more.

you can write a post about with all evidences and request a mod to take action on the user
or on your report, you can state the user has spammed a lot and include all related message ids
with that kind of reminder, mods may take appropriate action: nuke or ban the user

[o_e_l_e_o]

interesting idea but how exactly to decentralize nuking? by voting on spammer?

Nah, I simply meant by giving the power to mass nuke based on a repeated phrase to a number of mods, rather than relying on one specific person, who may not be online at the time they are needed.

you can write a post about with all evidences and request a mod to take action on the user

I do do that in the report comment box - state how many posts the user has had deleted recently and suggest they should be banned - but it rarely happens. We are really good at banning plagiarists; I just think we could be better at handing out escalating levels of bans to mass spammers.