Uptick in Troll Posts - Can We Please Require Registration to Post?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^FFS, Jeff doesn't want to do it. Start your own website and require registration.

+1 And also, as another poster mentioned, this site is also a business. It's not Jeff's hobby. So if no registartion allows him to operate his business with with ease. That's his decision and more power to him.

I think it's amazing he lets people give him feedback like this and actually engages in a discussion on the merits. Not sure what other site admin would do this.

[PolyesterTroll]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

[PolyesterTroll]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^FFS, Jeff doesn't want to do it. Start your own website and require registration.

+1 And also, as another poster mentioned, this site is also a business. It's not Jeff's hobby. So if no registartion allows him to operate his business with with ease. That's his decision and more power to him.

I think it's amazing he lets people give him feedback like this and actually engages in a discussion on the merits. Not sure what other site admin would do this.

Oh well, I tried to be helpful. But if this is the attitude, then time to take this dinosaur down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

"better" is subjective - to me, the experience is better because registration isn't required. Just because this forum doesn't operate like most other forums online doesn't make it worse. It makes it unique, which may be an advantage.

You're the worst. Start your own forum, registration required, and see how quickly you can build up an active and interesting set of regular posters.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Here is one challenge: a user registers using their Yahoo email address. Posts 1,000 messages over a few years and then their hard drive goes out taking their Excel spreadsheet of passwords with it. In the meantime they've deleted their Yahoo account and use Gmail. Automatic password retrievals don't work because they get bounced by Yahoo (or even worse, Misha from Novosibirsk has opened a new Yahoo account with their old username and he gets the reminders). So, now they want me to help them login. I don't even know of the person emailing me this tale of woe is really the person with that username or someone trying to social engineer their way into the account. Therefore, I'm presented with trying to decide if this is a legitimate request and, if so, helping resolve it. This is not an extreme example but similar to things I face regularly with our limited number of registered users.

On top of that, all I have to do is be wrong once about helping reset a password and inadvertently giving someone access to someone else's account and then nobody would trust registration here again.

We have a long list of improvements that we want to make and are making less noticeable but important changes regularly. The last thing I want to do is devote our time and efforts to managing logins. That is all beside the fact that the majority of our users don't want logins.

[PolyesterTroll]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Here is one challenge: a user registers using their Yahoo email address. Posts 1,000 messages over a few years and then their hard drive goes out taking their Excel spreadsheet of passwords with it. In the meantime they've deleted their Yahoo account and use Gmail. Automatic password retrievals don't work because they get bounced by Yahoo (or even worse, Misha from Novosibirsk has opened a new Yahoo account with their old username and he gets the reminders). So, now they want me to help them login. I don't even know of the person emailing me this tale of woe is really the person with that username or someone trying to social engineer their way into the account. Therefore, I'm presented with trying to decide if this is a legitimate request and, if so, helping resolve it. This is not an extreme example but similar to things I face regularly with our limited number of registered users.

On top of that, all I have to do is be wrong once about helping reset a password and inadvertently giving someone access to someone else's account and then nobody would trust registration here again.

We have a long list of improvements that we want to make and are making less noticeable but important changes regularly. The last thing I want to do is devote our time and efforts to managing logins. That is all beside the fact that the majority of our users don't want logins.

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Here is one challenge: a user registers using their Yahoo email address. Posts 1,000 messages over a few years and then their hard drive goes out taking their Excel spreadsheet of passwords with it. In the meantime they've deleted their Yahoo account and use Gmail. Automatic password retrievals don't work because they get bounced by Yahoo (or even worse, Misha from Novosibirsk has opened a new Yahoo account with their old username and he gets the reminders). So, now they want me to help them login. I don't even know of the person emailing me this tale of woe is really the person with that username or someone trying to social engineer their way into the account. Therefore, I'm presented with trying to decide if this is a legitimate request and, if so, helping resolve it. This is not an extreme example but similar to things I face regularly with our limited number of registered users.

On top of that, all I have to do is be wrong once about helping reset a password and inadvertently giving someone access to someone else's account and then nobody would trust registration here again.

We have a long list of improvements that we want to make and are making less noticeable but important changes regularly. The last thing I want to do is devote our time and efforts to managing logins. That is all beside the fact that the majority of our users don't want logins.

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

Don't be an ass. One of the reasons DCUM is so popular is that it's easy to just start posting, precisely because no registration is required. Go over to city-data or some other place that requires registration if that's important to you. The DCUM community in general is pretty smart and good at pointing out fake news and trolls. Jeff doesn't owe you an explanation nor is he required to make any changes at your request. Get over yourself.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

I noticed that you didn't answer a single one of my questions. Since you've called me technologically incompetent, I would really like to know your credentials that allow you to make such an evaluation. Again, how many systems of this sort have you personally migrated? To which software would you suggest that we migrate?

[PolyesterTroll]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

I noticed that you didn't answer a single one of my questions. Since you've called me technologically incompetent, I would really like to know your credentials that allow you to make such an evaluation. Again, how many systems of this sort have you personally migrated? To which software would you suggest that we migrate?

Don't be so smug, Jeff. Do your job. My credentials will be made clear starting next Sunday. Time is precious. Use it or lose it.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

I noticed that you didn't answer a single one of my questions. Since you've called me technologically incompetent, I would really like to know your credentials that allow you to make such an evaluation. Again, how many systems of this sort have you personally migrated? To which software would you suggest that we migrate?

Don't be so smug, Jeff. Do your job. My credentials will be made clear starting next Sunday. Time is precious. Use it or lose it.

Can't wait.

[Anonymous]

Registration means less posts, and less visits. Less visits means less ad revenue. Why would Jeff to go through 6 months worth of work to make the site less valuable?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Registration means less posts, and less visits. Less visits means less ad revenue. Why would Jeff to go through 6 months worth of work to make the site less valuable?

I am not sure that would be true. Reddit requires user ID's, and that site is very popular. If you think what some people post here is personal, go through there (especially personal finance) something. You would be surprised.

But, if what Jeff is doing now is working, then so be it. I do think the politics forum should have user ID's, that forum is beyond off the rails at this point.

[Anonymous]

Jeff - do you think you'd get nearly as many hits, thus income, if the site was converted overnight to a registered one? Let's be honest -- The anonymity is what makes it popular, just like twitter. He can talk all day about how "difficult" it is, but my bet would be that this archaic platform is financially beneficial to him. And hey, if he's just giving people what they want?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Registration means less posts, and less visits. Less visits means less ad revenue. Why would Jeff to go through 6 months worth of work to make the site less valuable?

I am not sure that would be true. Reddit requires user ID's, and that site is very popular. If you think what some people post here is personal, go through there (especially personal finance) something. You would be surprised.

But, if what Jeff is doing now is working, then so be it. I do think the politics forum should have user ID's, that forum is beyond off the rails at this point.

I think it would. I like posting anonymously and it's kind of the culture of this site. It works, why change it? And besides, if seeing troll posts upsets people that much then perhaps they should stay off the internet.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff - do you think you'd get nearly as many hits, thus income, if the site was converted overnight to a registered one? Let's be honest -- The anonymity is what makes it popular, just like twitter. He can talk all day about how "difficult" it is, but my bet would be that this archaic platform is financially beneficial to him. And hey, if he's just giving people what they want?

I think usage would drop and that of course would negatively impact revenue. But, most of those arguing for registration only want it for the Political Forum which would have less impact on revenue. However, the issues I outlined are real. If it was just a matter of flipping a switch, I would flip it and then flip it back again if it didn't work out. But, it's a lot more than flipping a switch.