3 ms·

Ever considered just shutting the door to new registrations at peak times to throttle growth? or at least only allowing new members that have been invited from

by axod 18y ago

Ever considered just shutting the door to new registrations at peak times to throttle growth? or at least only allowing new members that have been invited from existing members? I've seen some really whacky comments the last week or so.

ph0rque 18y ago
An invite-only strategy might actually backfire and make the site even hotter (see gmail, etc), although it will be interesting if the feature only turns on at certain times/due to certain conditions.
- axod 18y ago
  I'd say the most irritating could be people who: * See link to HN somewhere, follow it * Sign up, post some lame comments, never come back. So my thought was just adding some sort of barrier to sign up, to deter some of the people who only want to sign up so they can post a pun or some other non-HN worthy comment. (NB. This is only a hypothesis, I don't know how many people sign up post a few lame comments and never return).
  - timtrueman 18y ago
    Would a delay between when you sign up and when you can do anything with the account help?
  - markessien 18y ago
    A 1 day comment ban after sign-up would be more effective I think.
    - apalmblad 18y ago
      Perhaps, but that might affect lurkers (perhaps even long term lurkers) who finally decide they have something useful to say and want to say it - now. I tend to mostly lurk, but I did find myself in that situation a couple weeks ago.
    - mikeytown2 18y ago
      We do a 5 day comment ban at http://forum.doom9.org/ http://forum.doom9.org/ works very well. Spam is a rarity, and the talk is quite good. Example: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145561 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145561
    - lionhearted 18y ago
      I thought about this a while back - a big negative to it would be that if someone sees traffic coming from HN and comes to sign up and answer questions and feedback in the comments. I've seen lots of great first comments after signing up by people who had their content reached. A similar idea would a hard limit on comments for new people for the first day? 3 or 5 perhaps?
    - DarkShikari 18y ago
      Doom9, another forum I visit, does this for 5 days to force new users to read the FAQs and guides before asking their question. It works well, IMO.
    - smallpeni 18y ago
      mailto:carlnichols75@yahoo.com
3pt14159 18y ago
Or include some fairly simple auto-generated questions. "At what point does y = 2e^(2x) cross the line x = 2, accurate to 2 decimal points? y = __.__ x = __.__" Extremely simple for a hacker, daunting for the general public. (answer: tinyurl.com/b95cdw rounded up with x = 2.00, of course)
- axod 18y ago
  Or even some questions to show they've read the guidelines @ http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - bct 18y ago
    Show new users a fake front page; ones that upvote the content you don't want on the site get dumped. (I'm only partly joking)
- chris11 18y ago
  That might backfire. I might think less of a site that thought doing trivial math problems was a sign of my level of intelligence. And making it harder might also be bad. If they are too hard, you'll get people who are just signing up for the entrance test. Just think about how much press google's puzzles on their billboards got. And somebody will of course put the answers on the internet.
- aarongough 18y ago
  You might also get the occasional serious hacker who is just retarded at math (like me!)
  - timknauf 18y ago
    I would go further, and venture that 'serious hackers who will make good HN citizens' and 'people for whom the above problem is trivial' are two different sets (though the intersection of those sets might be significant).
chris11 18y ago
That might work.Sure it will probably make the site hotter, but as long as potential users are evaluated, it probably won't hurt the quality of the site. If we shut the door to new registrations, we definitely shouldn't make an invite only available from a member. I'm sure I would have had trouble getting an invite that way. What might work is deciding on a growth rate that can be handled by the site and the community, and then limiting the number of sign-ups each month, or even day. We could just use a list of email addresses for new users and send out X number of invitations a day. And we could also do more discourage those wacky comments. We could have new users do a short test, something trivial that requires them to have actually read the user guidelines. Maybe a multiple choice quiz where they have to distinguish between a trollish comment and an acceptable comment. Also we could start them out with a probationary account with stricter rules. Maybe if their account is newer than 5 days, and they have less than -8 karma, they get banned, or forced to read the site guidelines again before they posted more comments. Though if the site does implement anything like an invite system it's going to be hard. Some people are going to accuse the site of being elitist. So it would have to be communicated that any rules are solely for all comments civil and professional, not because we are trying to exclude anyone. Hey, I like some of the pun threads on reddit, and trolls on yahoo answers, but I think this site would get ruined if even a few trollish comments were allowed.

by axod 18y ago

ph0rque 18y ago

An invite-only strategy might actually backfire and make the site even hotter (see gmail, etc), although it will be interesting if the feature only turns on at certain times/due to certain conditions.

axod 18y ago
I'd say the most irritating could be people who: * See link to HN somewhere, follow it * Sign up, post some lame comments, never come back. So my thought was just adding some sort of barrier to sign up, to deter some of the people who only want to sign up so they can post a pun or some other non-HN worthy comment. (NB. This is only a hypothesis, I don't know how many people sign up post a few lame comments and never return).
- timtrueman 18y ago
  Would a delay between when you sign up and when you can do anything with the account help?
- markessien 18y ago
  A 1 day comment ban after sign-up would be more effective I think.
  - apalmblad 18y ago
    Perhaps, but that might affect lurkers (perhaps even long term lurkers) who finally decide they have something useful to say and want to say it - now. I tend to mostly lurk, but I did find myself in that situation a couple weeks ago.
  - mikeytown2 18y ago
    We do a 5 day comment ban at http://forum.doom9.org/ http://forum.doom9.org/ works very well. Spam is a rarity, and the talk is quite good. Example: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145561 http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145561
  - lionhearted 18y ago
    I thought about this a while back - a big negative to it would be that if someone sees traffic coming from HN and comes to sign up and answer questions and feedback in the comments. I've seen lots of great first comments after signing up by people who had their content reached. A similar idea would a hard limit on comments for new people for the first day? 3 or 5 perhaps?
  - DarkShikari 18y ago
    Doom9, another forum I visit, does this for 5 days to force new users to read the FAQs and guides before asking their question. It works well, IMO.
  - smallpeni 18y ago
    mailto:carlnichols75@yahoo.com

3pt14159 18y ago

Or include some fairly simple auto-generated questions. "At what point does y = 2e^(2x) cross the line x = 2, accurate to 2 decimal points? y = __.__ x = __.__" Extremely simple for a hacker, daunting for the general public. (answer: tinyurl.com/b95cdw rounded up with x = 2.00, of course)

axod 18y ago
Or even some questions to show they've read the guidelines @ http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bct 18y ago
  Show new users a fake front page; ones that upvote the content you don't want on the site get dumped. (I'm only partly joking)
chris11 18y ago
That might backfire. I might think less of a site that thought doing trivial math problems was a sign of my level of intelligence. And making it harder might also be bad. If they are too hard, you'll get people who are just signing up for the entrance test. Just think about how much press google's puzzles on their billboards got. And somebody will of course put the answers on the internet.
aarongough 18y ago
You might also get the occasional serious hacker who is just retarded at math (like me!)
- timknauf 18y ago
  I would go further, and venture that 'serious hackers who will make good HN citizens' and 'people for whom the above problem is trivial' are two different sets (though the intersection of those sets might be significant).

chris11 18y ago

That might work.Sure it will probably make the site hotter, but as long as potential users are evaluated, it probably won't hurt the quality of the site. If we shut the door to new registrations, we definitely shouldn't make an invite only available from a member. I'm sure I would have had trouble getting an invite that way. What might work is deciding on a growth rate that can be handled by the site and the community, and then limiting the number of sign-ups each month, or even day. We could just use a list of email addresses for new users and send out X number of invitations a day. And we could also do more discourage those wacky comments. We could have new users do a short test, something trivial that requires them to have actually read the user guidelines. Maybe a multiple choice quiz where they have to distinguish between a trollish comment and an acceptable comment. Also we could start them out with a probationary account with stricter rules. Maybe if their account is newer than 5 days, and they have less than -8 karma, they get banned, or forced to read the site guidelines again before they posted more comments. Though if the site does implement anything like an invite system it's going to be hard. Some people are going to accuse the site of being elitist. So it would have to be communicated that any rules are solely for all comments civil and professional, not because we are trying to exclude anyone. Hey, I like some of the pun threads on reddit, and trolls on yahoo answers, but I think this site would get ruined if even a few trollish comments were allowed.