4 ms·
Saving forums from themselves with shared hierarchical whitelists (2009)
- zenincognito 7y agoThe problem is that spammers will very likely create accounts (n) , use these accounts to create hierarchial lists assigning account (A ) at the top of hierarchy and use that to spam post or advertise. SEO spam works very similiar to this.
- lonelappde 7y agoHow would a spammer get to the top of each user's personal hierarchy? This personal hierarchical, not pagerank.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920110
- lonelappde 7y ago2009 and aged like milk. Top comment: "Maybe this is why Twitter works"
- dang 7y agoFine old threads are interesting; lousy old threads show that things don't always get worse. Win-win!
- alangibson 7y agoHas anyone experimented with forums that require verified identity? The forum would have to add a hell of alot of value to get people to do it, but I'd imagine it's the most airtight way to stop trolls and spammers. It wouldn't scale particularly well, but most forums have a relatively small group of posters adding all the value anyway.
- ObsoleteNerd 7y agoI’m on a forum that’s been around for a solid 15 years and doesn’t give you posting rights unless you pay $5/year. The amount is trivial enough that even the poorest members can manage it (or if they’re regulars and liked, others gift them a subscription) yet it seems to be enough to stop spammers bothering. There’s been a few trolls over the years who paid the $5 to bombard the forum with stuff but there’s also posting limitations for new members and other restrictions so it never goes very far. I still love forums to this day and think they have a place in the modern web. Reddit and Facebook will want you to think otherwise, but there’s hundreds of niche hobbies that specifically DON’T want the network effect of a large multi-topic forum like reddit and still do very well.
- 0az 7y agoYup. I'm a regular member of two relatively large forums focusing on SF and writing. This may be controversial, but I like the constraints of a non-branching discussion. In my opinion, unlike HN and Reddit's branching comments, linear posting allows for more in depth discussion of topics. One concession to the times is a proliferation of discord servers for the community, for various writings (including the notorious alien space whale which these two are most known for), subject matter groups (engineering hard SF hardware), and just general subcommunities.
- lonelappde 7y agoIs that Something Awful, Fark, Metafilter, or something else?
- etblg 7y agoSomething Awful isn't 5$ a year, it's 10$ for an account. And the amount of people who buy 10$ to re-reg their banned account and get banned for the exact same reason as before could not be classified as "a few". I am interested in learning which forum does the 5$ a year, I wasn't aware of many other forums with a pay-wall.
- Darkstryder 7y ago
- commandlinefan 7y agoSounds pretty much the way facebook works - you ensconce yourself in a bubble of opinions you agree with. Not that there's anything wrong with that if that's what you want, but don't try to fool yourself into thinking that the discussions will suddenly improve in "quality" if you filter out the people that irritate you.