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This problem is really easy to solve. Make your forum invite-only and have a ban on a user revoke the ability of the person that invited you to invite new users

This problem is really easy to solve. Make your forum invite-only and have a ban on a user revoke the ability of the person that invited you to invite new users. Do not make the links between who invited whom public. It's for moderation only. You can still have throwaway accounts for commenting on things and the overall community will be increasingly more civil.

SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
The fact that so many people have the need for throwaway counts entirely disputes the concept that this problem is easy to solve. The upvote/downvote system is designed to reinforce echo chambers and create a chilling effect for your “real” opinion if you know it doesn’t agree with the hive. That system is already trying to solve the problem and instead creating a different one. All you can do with an invite system is to make sure the echo chamber is even more structured. That “those people” aren’t even allowed to join. Hello country club.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  In this system you could still have throwaways, but the throwaway has to be invited/created from another account. This way you can create as many throwaways as needed but if you behave badly with your throwaway and it gets banned, then your main account is prevented from inviting new users and creating throwaways. Trolls could create new, primary, accounts but someone would still need to invite them back in. I definitely don't think that this would eliminate them, but it could potentially slow them down.
  - 3pt14159 6y ago
    And because the moderators have the tree of invites it's pretty easy to determine which branches are yielding troll accounts and prune further up if necessary.
ohazi 6y ago
> Make your forum invite-only > You can still have throwaway accounts How can both of these things be simultaneously true?
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  Say you or a friend has an account in good standing. Get an invite link with a unique token. Sign up with the link. Done. The inviter doesn't know the username of the invitee. It's only visible to the moderation team who invited whom.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    Assertion: A throwaway account is probably more likely to be banned than an identified account -- why else would anyone bother with throwaways? If the throwaway account is banned, the original link-giver would lose their good standing. (sorry, I should have highlighted this to the original reply) We can argue about whether the assertion is actually true, but even the perception that it might be true will make people reluctant to give out an invitation to someone wanting to create a throwaway account. If I had my own named account in good standing, I suppose I might be willing to use it to create a throwaway account for myself, provided that I was careful to only use that throwaway for... I don't know... "lightly" controversial content that is only likely to be downvoted rather than abusive content that is likely to be banned. (Not that I would ever actually create a throwaway in order to be abusive! Just trying to think like a troll). Actually, I guess that's what we wanted to encourage anyway, right? Controversial content should be fine; abusive content is not. Maybe this would work after all...
    - 3pt14159 6y ago
      Case 1: Your assertion is correct. The system works as intended and bans decrease. Case 2: Your assertion is incorrect. There is some other reason for making a throwaway (like talking about a former employer, for example) and the system works as intended. The throwaway doesn't get banned and nobody gets their account demoted. Also these demotions could have a time element to them, where you can't invite someone new for, say, a year.
magicalhippo 6y ago
That would work. However it could also make the community hard to grow. I surfed HN for years before I decided to make an account, and even now I don't really know anyone else using it in my circle. I guess I might have found someone if I asked around, but it would definitely raise the bar.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  Making communities hard to grow is a feature not a bug. Let us read our Shirky: https://web.archive.org/web/20050615082335/http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050615082335/http://shirky.com... A well-tended community is constrained by things like Dunbar's Number and SNR ratios. Soft forking is a common response - IMO reddit is the closest social platform to "getting it right", although it should do a better job of pushing low-value content (/r/politics, etc) down into the "minor leagues" of subreddits.
coldpie 6y ago
Yup. The key is restricting access. Another good option is to charge for an account. The Something Awful forums are the best large community I'm aware of on the Internet, and I believe it's mostly because of the $10 entry fee and the excellent moderators. When you have to pony up hundreds of dollars a year to keep shitposting, you tend to get fewer shitposters.
wave100 6y ago
How would you account for people being invited, then immediately creating a bunch of alternate accounts to hand out to people/use for nefarious purposes later?

SlowRobotAhead 6y ago

The fact that so many people have the need for throwaway counts entirely disputes the concept that this problem is easy to solve. The upvote/downvote system is designed to reinforce echo chambers and create a chilling effect for your “real” opinion if you know it doesn’t agree with the hive. That system is already trying to solve the problem and instead creating a different one. All you can do with an invite system is to make sure the echo chamber is even more structured. That “those people” aren’t even allowed to join. Hello country club.

hundchenkatze 6y ago
In this system you could still have throwaways, but the throwaway has to be invited/created from another account. This way you can create as many throwaways as needed but if you behave badly with your throwaway and it gets banned, then your main account is prevented from inviting new users and creating throwaways. Trolls could create new, primary, accounts but someone would still need to invite them back in. I definitely don't think that this would eliminate them, but it could potentially slow them down.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  And because the moderators have the tree of invites it's pretty easy to determine which branches are yielding troll accounts and prune further up if necessary.

ohazi 6y ago

> Make your forum invite-only > You can still have throwaway accounts How can both of these things be simultaneously true?

3pt14159 6y ago
Say you or a friend has an account in good standing. Get an invite link with a unique token. Sign up with the link. Done. The inviter doesn't know the username of the invitee. It's only visible to the moderation team who invited whom.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Assertion: A throwaway account is probably more likely to be banned than an identified account -- why else would anyone bother with throwaways? If the throwaway account is banned, the original link-giver would lose their good standing. (sorry, I should have highlighted this to the original reply) We can argue about whether the assertion is actually true, but even the perception that it might be true will make people reluctant to give out an invitation to someone wanting to create a throwaway account. If I had my own named account in good standing, I suppose I might be willing to use it to create a throwaway account for myself, provided that I was careful to only use that throwaway for... I don't know... "lightly" controversial content that is only likely to be downvoted rather than abusive content that is likely to be banned. (Not that I would ever actually create a throwaway in order to be abusive! Just trying to think like a troll). Actually, I guess that's what we wanted to encourage anyway, right? Controversial content should be fine; abusive content is not. Maybe this would work after all...
  - 3pt14159 6y ago
    Case 1: Your assertion is correct. The system works as intended and bans decrease. Case 2: Your assertion is incorrect. There is some other reason for making a throwaway (like talking about a former employer, for example) and the system works as intended. The throwaway doesn't get banned and nobody gets their account demoted. Also these demotions could have a time element to them, where you can't invite someone new for, say, a year.

magicalhippo 6y ago

That would work. However it could also make the community hard to grow. I surfed HN for years before I decided to make an account, and even now I don't really know anyone else using it in my circle. I guess I might have found someone if I asked around, but it would definitely raise the bar.

kthejoker2 6y ago
Making communities hard to grow is a feature not a bug. Let us read our Shirky: https://web.archive.org/web/20050615082335/http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050615082335/http://shirky.com... A well-tended community is constrained by things like Dunbar's Number and SNR ratios. Soft forking is a common response - IMO reddit is the closest social platform to "getting it right", although it should do a better job of pushing low-value content (/r/politics, etc) down into the "minor leagues" of subreddits.

coldpie 6y ago

Yup. The key is restricting access. Another good option is to charge for an account. The Something Awful forums are the best large community I'm aware of on the Internet, and I believe it's mostly because of the $10 entry fee and the excellent moderators. When you have to pony up hundreds of dollars a year to keep shitposting, you tend to get fewer shitposters.

wave100 6y ago

How would you account for people being invited, then immediately creating a bunch of alternate accounts to hand out to people/use for nefarious purposes later?