Like "Are you going to use this board for evil? Check yes or no." on the registration.

Followup "Do you mean cool evil (the kind with leather pants) or merely annoying evil (the kind with big hair and multiple personalities)?"

that was pretty conclusively shouted down last time it was discussed.

I thought what was shouted down was a "complain to the stompies and get a ban" procedure that left out any public discussion or attempts to resolve things on-board. However, I could be misremembering.

I'm speaking only for myself here, but I can't really see the problem with someone writing to the stompies to say, "I don't feel safe bringing this up, but..." at which point, assuming that there have been attempts to resolve things in-thread, we could post in bureau on that person's behalf to get things rolling officially.

Java, what amy said, which I'm saying a lot today. The proposal is not about problems with posters, it's about people who haven't registered at all.

Again, I did not propose that any specific threads be locked. The proposal is whether or not we should even have the ability to do it. I probably shouldn't have mentioned examples of threads that one might propose be locked. Even if we have the ability, we would still have to propose, discuss, and vote to lock a thread.

I can't really see the problem with someone writing to the stompies to say, "I don't feel safe bringing this up, but..." at which point, assuming that there have been attempts to resolve things in-thread, we could post in bureau on that person's behalf to get things rolling officially.

From what I remember, there was a feeling that the problem with that was that the poster who was being discussed should know who they had offended.

Rather than locking an existing thread, what if we established a new reporting procedure? Cindy said:

I think we either need some sort of private thread to discuss our suspensions and bannings, or some other method.

What about an email account off-site?

I just want to mention that Bitches is not really all full of the secrets that non-Bitches think it is

I don't know, the things I've learned about people moisturizing habits has been rather shocking.

But seriously, I'll be voting no. Anything to avoid the air of exclusivity. And if paying for access were ever proposed, even if I were to be grandfathered in, I'd be gone.

What about an email account off-site?

That really only applies to Cindy's situation. My concern is more with discussing things like what our response is to be when our hosting service screws us over, or we have to devise a response to two lurkers who are threatening the community.

But--why wouldn't an off-site account or "thread," if you like, serve those purposes? Login password could be changed when a concensus was reached, and given only to registered Phoenix users who are interested in a given discussion. It sounds very neat and sequestered to me--

--and is that the problem? That, and I suspect it might be an admin nightmare.

Still, I'd prefer it to locking an onsite thread to all but a select few registered members.

But--why wouldn't an off-site account or "thread," if you like, serve those purposes? Login password could be changed when a concensus was reached, and given only to registered Phoenix users who are interested in a given discussion. It sounds very neat and sequestered to me--

No, you'd have to give the password to every registered Buffista account. Plus you'd have to go off-site to do it. How many people are currently keeping up with the discussion over at WX right now?

we have to devise a response to two lurkers who are threatening the community.

I don't see how someone could do that without registering or posting. Even if someone wanted to, our profiles and email addys aren't visible if you're reading as a guest. Which is a thin wall, but finding our emails elsewhere would be another step someone would have to go through. Finally, I can't see any of us taking discontent-sowing from people we had never heard of all that seriously anyhow.

And if someone does want to register and post for purposes of evil, we have a way to deal with that.

I don't mean to be harsh, DX. I just don't see registration alone as really being any barrier at all to those with evil intent, and I do think it will discourage some people who would want to join the community.

One possibility that would be stronger than registration alone would be registration, plus X posts, to see certain threads. But, again, it's pretty easy to rack up however many innocuous posts are needed. So while it would discourage some blow-in trolls, but it would also effectively keep all lurkers out of those discussions. I'm just throwing it out there as another option.