Site Management Content moderation for new members?

[Sinistra]

So I joined this forum yesterday, to 1 see if I could do some type of link exchange with them, and make some new friends. So like normal, I go to the Introductions forum to start my first topic on this site. To come to this shocking sight the introduction forum is set to approve content by staff. I have never seen this before, A community should be inviting and free of stuff like this. Now Could this be the sign of a paranoid staff? or are they making sure their site doesn't get spammed up? What do you think it could be?

Could this be a paranoid staff? or do you think it's their way of keeping spam off their community?

 

[Al]

It’s the kind of thing which puts me off. In that situation, unless it was something I was desperate to access and it was the only way, I’d log off and leave.

It’s the one thing I find irritating; maybe because I’m a firm believer in quality over quantity. But locking features behind postcount is annoying. Especially if it’s incredibly basic features like posting a thread - in an introduction forum! It’s the very reason that forum section exists!

 

[Debashis]

Most probably they are doing it to keep spam off their community. I think they do it for the first 5-10 posts. Personally, I don't feel good whenever it happens to me. It's an instant turn off. They should definitely not have it if it's a general discussion forum.

I'm sure there must be better ways to detect spam at an earlier stage like maybe during the registration or the first login.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

It doesn't bother me. I don't have it turned on currently on my new project, but on our established community we actually manually review and approve applications AND moderate newcomers.

 

[Al]

What’s the rationale behind that decision @Dismal_Bliss ?

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

What’s the rationale behind that decision @Dismal_Bliss ?

The forum is not for the public, but only for a niche group of people. You have to be a member of this group in real life in order to also be a member in the online community.

 

[Cory]

There could be a motive behind it. If the board is dealing with lots of spam/trolling, then I suppose I could understand trying to put it back into control through moderation approval. But in most cases, there are powerful enough moderation tools to combat such issues. I personally dislike when topics or posts are set to moderator approval, it almost feels like taking away my freedom of speech.

 

[Ravenfreak]

They could have had a influx of spammers joining the forums. I only had post moderation on for one community and it was honestly a mistake I made. When someone brought it up to me I turned the feature off. I can see it being a good thing in some forums, ones that discuss sensitive topics but general discussion forums or any other forum shouldn't have post moderation.

 

[Reverie]

On former communities like Pinhead stated, when there was a influx of spammers joining, we became admin-approval for joining the community, but would let them&guests post in a hidden forum that only they could see. Just letting them know about why we were on admin approval. I would think a notification of post-approval would be helpful in that case because I think it would turn people away from their communities.

 

[Paul]

To come to this shocking sight the introduction forum is set to approve content by staff.

If it's only in the introduction area, that's weird. There could be no stopping a "newbie" posting in other areas?

 

[Sinistra]

If it's only in the introduction area, that's weird. There could be no stopping a "newbie" posting in other areas?

Nope after a deeper investigation, the whole board was moderated and it took them a week to approve my intro, So it shows me the staff is not active in this community.

 

[Uncrowned]

It is definitely off-putting for me when I join and then cannot actually engage in the community. I do try to understand that some forums can have massive spam issues, especially older forums with high search engine rankings but that might be struggling with low staff numbers and unable to cope properly with the high spammer rate.

But it is definitely something I try to avoid at all costs and thankfully do not have to enact on my own communities.

 

[Lucy Lacemaker]

I’ve only come across this once it was a turn off

 

[Arantor]

What is the purpose of content moderation for new members?

 

[Uncrowned]

What is the purpose of content moderation for new members?

Normally to catch spammers so their content can be moderated out before being shown live. The downside is that it generally is needed on forums short on staff to cover all the spam, which also means they are delayed on approving real members. Hard to find the best solution if a forum is a spam target.

 

[Arantor]

And that's exactly why I asked the question. You're trying to solve a problem by trying to treat a symptom rather than the root cause - and in the crossfire penalising genuine new members.

The next logical follow-up question: what behaviours are you trying to prevent by doing this? Why not target *those* instead of brute force weapons?

 

[Tyrsson]

I believe at one time there was a forum software that allowed you to prevent new members from posting links (in post and signatures) until they reached a defined post count was there not??

 

[Arantor]

Wedge let you build custom rules for this, e.g. 'if post is by people in (groups), contains more than x links, moderate the post' (where you could do more than that, e.g. you could refuse the post, or change number of links and various other rule components). It was in part inspired by the 'Anti Spam Links' mod that simplemachines.org uses.

 

[joelr]

Nope after a deeper investigation, the whole board was moderated and it took them a week to approve my intro, So it shows me the staff is not active in this community.

If it took a week for them to approve your registration, you might have dodged a bullet and that you're better off by not using them for a link exchange.

 

[Sinistra]

If it took a week for them to approve your registration, you might have dodged a bullet and that you're better off by not using them for a link exchange.

Yeah, I'm not I would rather associate with an active community than deal with them. I mean don't get me wrong it is OK to moderate your members to a point but why do it community-wide and on a community where the staff is inactive?