I'd vote against. I don't think it fixes anything (it wouldn't have deterred any of the issues we've had so far, and I'm not clear on how it would deter anyone persistent enough to be actually annoying).

Uh huh.

I don't lurk. I didn't lurk. My registration to post gap is under a day, at every board I've registered for.

Same here. I mean, I'll lurk for a while if a conversation seems tricky -- I read Bitches on and off for many weeks -- but if I'm seriously reading something? I'm gonna open my big mouth.

I'm ticked enough when the conversation surges past where it would have been apropos for me to say what I wanted, that if there were a technical barrier in place too ... I'd walk.

I'm not actually invested in this. My load of bitterness that Allyson talks about, has been and gone, and I'm in a non-committment place about internet groups in general. And I'm not actually around often enough, or in the right timezones to use the threads as a defacto chat board. 'tis why I'll never be a natterer or a bitch. That's me. I understand that. And I get involved (or not) accordingly.

It did seem to me, however, that the people who have contributed negatively to this community, have overwhelmingly not understood this community.

Making an effort to do so? Not a bad thing. And certainly not dependent upon any need to interact, in a public manner, from the first moment one found the board.

Given a choice between BuffistaNewbieX being able to post immediately, and TrollY being excluded from doing so, I know I'd choose the later. Because if BuffistaNewbieX is a good fit, or wants to be, they'll be back. TrollY? Has already moved on to terrorising some other forum.

Because if BuffistaNewbieX is a good fit, or wants to be, they'll be back.

Hmm. See, Lyra Jane, Allyson and I are cut from different cloths, but we've all stated it's unlikely we'd have been back.

It's a baby with the bathwater thing to me. You'll lose a percentage of posters. I see no evidence that the numbers will be skewed in favour of deterring misfits.

It did seem to me, however, that the people who have contributed negatively to this community, have overwhelmingly not understood this community.

Making an effort to do so? Not a bad thing. And certainly not dependent upon any need to interact, in a public manner, from the first moment one found the board.

There are, and have been, people who saw the board, jumped right in, and had a handle on things from the get-go. There are people who lurked for a long time then jumped in. And there are some who, with or without prior lurking, had some adjusting to do. There is no one-size-fits-all waiting period that will ensure that people "get" us. But several folks have noted that trying to implement one probably would have made them move on, and why on earth would we want to do that?

In my case, I lurked for a long time at TT without registering - at that point, if I'd had to register, I probably would have skipped it. When I did register, it was because I had something I just had to say. You can't know how long someone's been hanging around before they go through the reg process, and I don't think it's useful to try.

It seems you're trying to legislate lurk-to-learn. But if something sparks my interest, I want to jump in with both feet, and I suspect others feel that way as well. Lurk-to-learn wouldn't have stopped either of the banned folks, they were around long enough to learn, if they could, wanted to, or were able to do so.

Lurk-to-learn helps with rules, but you can't legislate a personality or pshche that fits. You can't legislate sanity, or social skills.

That's where our biggest problems will be. Spoilers in unAmerican is something we can totally fix, because we have active "moderation" of those sorts of rules, and our Stompies are quick with the whitefont.

I'd not want to lose an ita to a registration pause. We're good with Jono-type trolls who would fuck with coding.

We're not so good with "wrong fit." And unfortunately for short fuses like me, the way it works is that we'll spend weeks on toilet training, days on debate, and a lot of energy on buttering our doorway to squish the bad fit back out into the net machine.

But now that it's been legislated that way, I can bide my time until the ill-fitting poster loses out on their write priviledge.

Interested enough to not walk away if they can't post right.here.and.now.

ME ME ME ME

I would have walked away.

I would guess you'd have lost many good posters along with maybe some not so good ones. And you'd have lost me (whichever category you lump me in).

You can't legislate sanity, or social skills.

True enough.

See, Lyra Jane, Allyson and I are cut from different cloths, but we've all stated it's unlikely we'd have been back.

And I think that's the key to why voting discussions become so problematic. 3 people, three cloths. 900 people, nine hundred cloths. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing. And it's the thing that's going to make it difficult to formulate any kind of enforceable behaviours.

It's important to you that you can (or could) register and immediately participate in this community. It's important to me, for instance, that there aren't closed threads in this community.

Basically, upthread, I was trying to look at what wolfram was trying to achieve with his suggestions and see if there was a more palatable, even handed way to do that. I guess the short answer is no.

All the arguments against having closed threads also apply to the usefulness of having Search available only to registered users (when it was). Yet that actually did have some preventive function, because there was no link to it anywhere. No one's boss was going to register to get Search, because they wouldn't know we had it.

Bureaucracy has almost as much camouflage, just by looking boring. Mieskie didn't know about it. But it would be even more hidden than Search if it didn't have a link, because people wouldn't be asking about it as often.

Yet that actually did have some preventive function, because there was no link to it anywhere.

There was always an intention to add a link to Search once the coding was completed.

Mieskie didn't know about it. But it would be even more hidden than Search if it didn't have a link

IMO, the biggest mistake we made in the mieskie sitch was not inviting him to Bureauracy at the start of the discussion about him. Open discussions are a good thing.