As we currently have an age restriction option for the user's birthday, can we get an account age restriction option as well? By that I mean requiring an account to be 24 or 48 (maybe 72?) hours old to be able to apply to a group.
I ask this primarily because sometimes accounts that have only been around for less than an hour apply to join my support group, only to never have any activity again afterwards. I want to avoid populating my group with accounts that get almost immediately abandoned, as my group's forums are members only for good reasons. I do my best to screen profiles based on activity and content before accepting, but group founders can only see so much info to judge on. I don't want to deny users who have anonymous characters exclusively and join with a user account that looks devoid of activity when it's actually not!
I would not want the limit to be longer than a few days to avoid account-age discrimination. I really want the purpose to be avoiding throwaway accounts from getting into groups and reduce the potential for harassment from newly created accounts to get around bans.
I ask this primarily because sometimes accounts that have only been around for less than an hour apply to join my support group, only to never have any activity again afterwards. I want to avoid populating my group with accounts that get almost immediately abandoned, as my group's forums are members only for good reasons. I do my best to screen profiles based on activity and content before accepting, but group founders can only see so much info to judge on. I don't want to deny users who have anonymous characters exclusively and join with a user account that looks devoid of activity when it's actually not!
I would not want the limit to be longer than a few days to avoid account-age discrimination. I really want the purpose to be avoiding throwaway accounts from getting into groups and reduce the potential for harassment from newly created accounts to get around bans.
You've touched on a really important dilemma, namely balancing users' rights to avoid account-age discrimination versus their right to reasonable protection from fly-by-nights and harassment. It would be cool if the RPR's new code could in some way help.
I really can't imagine any group leader given the choice would not want to keep away applications from accounts less than a few days/an hour old. The question would be how to go about it in a way that allowed a group leader to discriminate to their comfort level, but still protected legitimate apps from anxiety pertaining to not having an account "old" enough. Privacy for all involved would be nice, too. Off the top of my head:
Plenty of ways this idea could change RPR for the better. Also, this is me hijacking your suggestion a bit, but site-wide it would be cool if abuse-prone features unlocked for new accounts gradually: something like 10 minutes to post on the forums, 24 hours to send PMs and join groups, 48 hours to send PMs and join groups as characters. It wouldn't be too discriminatory, and imagine how much moderator work it would save.
I really can't imagine any group leader given the choice would not want to keep away applications from accounts less than a few days/an hour old. The question would be how to go about it in a way that allowed a group leader to discriminate to their comfort level, but still protected legitimate apps from anxiety pertaining to not having an account "old" enough. Privacy for all involved would be nice, too. Off the top of my head:
- Group leaders may or may not want it shown that they're discriminating by account age, as it could inform bad actors what they need to get around it.
- In an applicant-focused format, apps that don't make the grade could get a message that their app wasn't sent but don't worry because the group doesn't know, come back on X date.
- It could be double-blind: apps from too-new accounts appear to be sent, but are held in the system until they make the grade, and are then showed to the groups none the wiser.
- Apps (or private messages) from fresh accounts could come with a warning that the account is "new". Only Kim needs to know if this means the account was made recently or they haven't been at all active on the forums or whatever; members don't need that info, but are well within their rights to be advised if someone has joined the site and made a beeline for them.
Plenty of ways this idea could change RPR for the better. Also, this is me hijacking your suggestion a bit, but site-wide it would be cool if abuse-prone features unlocked for new accounts gradually: something like 10 minutes to post on the forums, 24 hours to send PMs and join groups, 48 hours to send PMs and join groups as characters. It wouldn't be too discriminatory, and imagine how much moderator work it would save.
I can think of many reasons why people don't want an account age to restrict their group's application process. My group simply deals with very sensitive topics and a members-only forum, which means I have to be more vigilant with my application process.
I feel like some of these suggestions are not really in keeping with the spirit of what I'm suggesting. Users need to know why they can't apply the same way blocked users get told why they can't apply before they're even shown the application form. It doesn't have to be more complex than "Sorry, this group requires your account to be x hours old before you can reply. You can check your account details here".
I'd hate for users to put a lot of effort into an application only for it to be nixed automatically, that seems mean when they should be prevented from being shown the form at all. And if you tell them 'come back on X date' doesn't that defeat the purpose of withholding the reason they can't apply anyway?
Can you explain how being told you need to wait x hours increases potential for abuse? I'm having a hard time thinking of any likely scenarios where being barred from applying for a limited time increases the chances of abusive behavior. The only thing they can do is create a new account, which will set them back to square zero, unless I'm missing something important here!
As far as I'm concerned, making this feature more complex than outputting a simple message and not allowing them to apply for x hours defeats the purpose of it and creates more work than necessary for both Kim and group founders and group mods. If you allow applications to be held until they're released it's only going to create more situations where people can put in bad answers that won't get seen for a while because their accounts are too new, or they'll PM the founder asking why they didn't accept the application yet which nobody can answer because there's no message indicating what's going on. This will probably lead to more messages to the mods asking for help when they can't do anything about it either.
As for a site-wide feature block until x hours have passed, I'm voting a hard no on that. There currently doesn't exist a problem that would get solved with this and it would only put up many barriers for new members to join the community and probably lower interest rates. I sure ditch sites that make me wait to use their basic features very quickly myself, I'd hate for that to happen on RPR!
I feel like some of these suggestions are not really in keeping with the spirit of what I'm suggesting. Users need to know why they can't apply the same way blocked users get told why they can't apply before they're even shown the application form. It doesn't have to be more complex than "Sorry, this group requires your account to be x hours old before you can reply. You can check your account details here".
I'd hate for users to put a lot of effort into an application only for it to be nixed automatically, that seems mean when they should be prevented from being shown the form at all. And if you tell them 'come back on X date' doesn't that defeat the purpose of withholding the reason they can't apply anyway?
Can you explain how being told you need to wait x hours increases potential for abuse? I'm having a hard time thinking of any likely scenarios where being barred from applying for a limited time increases the chances of abusive behavior. The only thing they can do is create a new account, which will set them back to square zero, unless I'm missing something important here!
As far as I'm concerned, making this feature more complex than outputting a simple message and not allowing them to apply for x hours defeats the purpose of it and creates more work than necessary for both Kim and group founders and group mods. If you allow applications to be held until they're released it's only going to create more situations where people can put in bad answers that won't get seen for a while because their accounts are too new, or they'll PM the founder asking why they didn't accept the application yet which nobody can answer because there's no message indicating what's going on. This will probably lead to more messages to the mods asking for help when they can't do anything about it either.
As for a site-wide feature block until x hours have passed, I'm voting a hard no on that. There currently doesn't exist a problem that would get solved with this and it would only put up many barriers for new members to join the community and probably lower interest rates. I sure ditch sites that make me wait to use their basic features very quickly myself, I'd hate for that to happen on RPR!
Not all my suggestions are compatible with one another, and I didn't articulate them in detail, so I'm sorry if that caused any confusion! Obviously there would be no point hiding the reason for a refusal in a 'come-back-later' system, and ideally an applicant would be turned away before answering questions.
You also said in the OP that you were having issues with accounts less than an hour old trying to join your group; this sounds like exactly the kind of thing that a very-short-term feature lock would solve. Also, if someone was concerned with "reducing the potential for harassment from newly created accounts to get around bans", the delay seems like it could provide a window of opportunity for a mod to notice a new account created from an IP recently linked to a ban, or for a would-be harasser to calm down and call their bad idea off.
I can't, because this makes no sense, and after rereading my post five times I'm still not sure where you got it from.
To be clear, I'm not adding suggestions to challenge yours or in any way suggest it's inferior; I like your idea, and I agree simple is generally best. If this were the regular Suggestions forum that'd be the end of it, but since this is the Operation Audacious Phoenix, can-we-be-ambitious-with-new-code, new-features-sitewide forum, I'm spitballing. I don't presume to have all the answers, and if they seem imperfect to someone with much more experience managing groups and users, go easy on me.
You also said in the OP that you were having issues with accounts less than an hour old trying to join your group; this sounds like exactly the kind of thing that a very-short-term feature lock would solve. Also, if someone was concerned with "reducing the potential for harassment from newly created accounts to get around bans", the delay seems like it could provide a window of opportunity for a mod to notice a new account created from an IP recently linked to a ban, or for a would-be harasser to calm down and call their bad idea off.
Sanne wrote:
Can you explain how being told you need to wait x hours increases potential for abuse? I'm having a hard time thinking of any likely scenarios where being barred from applying for a limited time increases the chances of abusive behavior.
I can't, because this makes no sense, and after rereading my post five times I'm still not sure where you got it from.
To be clear, I'm not adding suggestions to challenge yours or in any way suggest it's inferior; I like your idea, and I agree simple is generally best. If this were the regular Suggestions forum that'd be the end of it, but since this is the Operation Audacious Phoenix, can-we-be-ambitious-with-new-code, new-features-sitewide forum, I'm spitballing. I don't presume to have all the answers, and if they seem imperfect to someone with much more experience managing groups and users, go easy on me.
