Stemming the flow of muppets. Get a coffee this is a long one.

DeVore

Right, I'm going to use ADMIN for the purpose it was set up for, discussing the community and the future. (actually I should put a charter on this board )


Lately there has been a greater and greater tide of muppets.
I dont know if its people from boards who think its funny (at least some of them are as they immediately reference other boards people and historic events) or if they are just random idiots floating about in the ether of the internet.

Either way we have to find a way to stem the tide of muppets as we get bigger. Now, currently its ok for the admins to snip and clean up but as you have noticed probably, there are too many muppets for me to hit back at all of them and also the people from boards who troll are smart enough to avoid being traced easily.

We have several options:

1. Close boards.ie. I mean it, I dont want to spend my time cleaning up after smart people who abuse what we put out there.
More then anything the trolls make me sad and it annoys me when people think my time and the time of the other admins can just be wasted so easily. Well, we have options too.
All the same, this would be a radical move and I prefer some of the other options. anyway, this punishes people who are mates because of people who are idiots... never a good thing.

2. Stop taking new members. Now this might work, we have enough people here to sustain boards.ie and a sufficent number of people who will support us via t-shirts and boards beer to make it run financially easily enough for us.
But people do wander away from boards and this option would just see us die slowly.

3. Restrict new user sign ups to invite-only.
Ok, this is the one I want to talk about.

We can (through the miracle of the int0rweb) stop people from joining the community unless invited by another member. Lets say you want your mate Jimmy to be a member of Boards.ie. You invite him and he's in.

Otherwise he cant join. Also, we can see who invite who so we can trace back muppets to their "inviter"

So if Jimmy turns out to be an asshole, he gets kicked then you get flagged for having invited an asshole. You invite him (or some other asshole) again and you both get kicked.
Now *you* and jimmy cant get back in because anyone who invites you will be responsible for YOUR actions just as you were for jimmy's (would anyone invite someone who's been kicked before knowing that their account is then tied to that persons behaviour? I wouldnt! )

This will stop the muppets and people will behave better imho but the flow of people will slow as the public wont be able to just sign up. We'd lose all those people who just wandered by and found boards by accident.

4. Continue as is. This is potentially doable, the problem isnt huge at the moment but just bothering me primarily because of the "I'm a clever clogs" boards users who seem happy to waste my time on stupid posts they seem to think are funny ways to have a laugh at <insert person they dislike here>.
Maybe I'm being too sensitive.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out for discussion because I think we are big enough to grow on user invites I just cant work out all the possible ramifications of it...

I've discussed this with Regi who's not sure its a good idea but other then that I havent spoken to the other admins about it.

So there you go...

DeV.

Dustaz

1st

option 4.

Encourage heavier modding and iron fist adminery.

Option 3 would result in all of cork being banned eventually

DeVore

Since we dont advertise boards.ie anywhere, how did you guys and gals find us in the first place.

If you are going to reply to this please also state how you first came accross boards.ie. Did a mate tell you about it?

DeV.

DeVore

Originally posted by Dustaz
Encourage heavier modding and iron fist adminery.

Option 3 would result in all of cork being banned eventually

Heavier modding might work but its also divisive and walking that fine line between "having a laugh on a thread" and "being a spammy git" is a hard one for the mods to judge.

Why would option 3 result in all of cork being banned, I'm sure many of our cork members wouldnt invite Culchie Boy and his ilk in. So only Culchie boy and anyone who invited him would be banned. I think you'd find the cork contingent would quickly divide into two camps. The very-soon-to-be-leaving-boards.ie camp and the I-want-nothing-to-do-with-cork-muppets camp.

It would also stop the Different-nick-same-crap syndrome as they just wouldnt be able to get in.

DeV.

_sheep

Personally id go with the invite option, this cuts out people looking for a laugh for 5 minutes, and makes the boards a better place.

Personally i cant see 2 many bad sides to this option. I mean if someone does decide they want to join boards (and they dont know anybody to get invited, an e-mail to an admin or something could get them in also - at admin's descresion and after a possible waiting period or something).

TBH tho i kinda like boards as it is (although the current situation doesnt suit the mod's at all). People like sonic10 i have to say made me laugh, (and the legendary Violent Rage/glenstall thread) but some posts did go 2 far (some personal issues posts)

Anyway thats just my 2cent(s?)

<edit> Found out about it in Irc from a few m8's

BioHazRd

I think the idea behind "invite only" is inherently a good one - the muppets seem to be breeding more rapidly these days. Unfortunately it does not take into account Mr. Billy-No-Mates, who might actually have something worthwhile to contribute to boards. Maybe in this case, you should have a vetting committee, so people can plead individual cases where necessary. This could also be the place to go if you feel you've been kicked in the wrong.

That's my two cents anyway

BTW - I was pointed to boards by Styx at dnagames, who said I may find some like minded people here. You're stuck with me now - I ain't movin

Bio

<edit>Megasheeps post appeared while I was typing - another like minded soul I see </edit>

Dustaz

I did a search on google for 'tribes' and 'irish'. Boards was the second result.


How about making it so that you have to wait 24 hours before posting? This would cut out some of the instant gratification muppets pretty instantly.

I hate the thought of boards membership being somewhat limited. The openess is part of its rich tapestry. If someone stumbles accross boards, how are they going to get someone to invite them in, if they dont know anyone in the community? It might even start to promote elitism on a bigger scale.

At the risk of mentioning the 'the dark side', how do p45 deal with this issue?

ykt0di9url7bc3

if it turns to invites then kiss "bye bye" to personal issues

its the summer, a season where muppets have too much free time, when college and secondry education starts back these muppets will tire of finding the time to piss you off!

and when autumn rolls in then the copiuos amounts of posting can start up again...

until then if anyone find a muppet....throw the whole book at it or worse!

[imo]

smiles

I think invite only would be a good idea, would cut out on the muppets.

I heard from Asuka when he set up the CTYI forum, which is now absolutely exploding with new people and some of the old ones are starting to post around the rest of boards, there's a definite pimpage of that board by the CTYI people (sick to death or really long mailing lists and spam "funny" mail).

I'd suggest that in order to invite someone new in you have to have been here for a certain amount of time, ie. 3-6 months or something?

<< Fio >>

smiles

Originally posted by SearrarD
if it turns to invites then kiss "bye bye" to personal issues

Not really, besides the trolls most of the people who post have been registered for a few months at least.

<< Fio >>

Winters

You could put ther person on a limited account for a week where by they can only post once a day..... that would (hopefully) stop people setting up an account and posting over and over again....

though the problem is they can just register with another account but would they take the time to do this? Ill work on my idea a bit more.

ykt0di9url7bc3

thats a damn good idea winters!

a probationary period....

first week-2 posts a day
second week -3 posts a day
third week - unlimited

and thier boards status, (eg cool newbie) have it starting out as, first week then second week....then newbie

if the muppets may come then they will be lit up and hinderd straight away

Thanx 4 The Fish

Originally posted by smiles


Not really, besides the trolls most of the people who post have been registered for a few months at least.

That may well be the case but those people who (as is their right)wish to remain anonymous by posting as unregistered are rightly flocked unless there is a post as unregistered option. I would like to see it run as is for the moment, possibly if it does start getting worse then the invite option sounds next best. It does cut down on the number of peeps who are gonna join us though.

Found out from Dav

DeVore

Ok, firstly there is another possibility.

5. Wait for static ips for all. Ie: when static ips come around (with broadband etc) we can just ban that ip.
(I dont mind banning muppets once, its the reoccurance of it thats depressing).

The idea of a probation period is interesting but the system doesnt work like that and that would be a major hack which we'd have to do everytime the system was upgraded.

Unregistered votes wouldnt be affected by this change as we are talking about invitations to *become* registered. Unregistered would work the same way as currently.

dont forget to let me know where you found out about boards.ie.

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

smiles

How about having the invite system, but if people who dont know anyone want to join then they can, but have a limit on their number of posts per day *and* all their posts must be preapproved by the moderators of the forum they are posting to - hence we can cut them out at the bud if we need to, but arent bogged down by having to moderate everyones posts.

<< Fio >>

Repli

DeVore i dont think that thing with the static IPs will work because people can just post from an internet cafe or whatever and banning the ip will potentially ban other users and they could also use a web proxy to post..
I think the invite system would work because if someone muppet is taking the p1ss then there is someone to hold responsible for his actions
i found out about boards year ago when someone in netshop left it open on the PC

DeVore

Merc good points (my god man whats happening to you lately!)

But some of them are not logical either.

1. Banning hotmail accounts doesnt stop the muppets (free mail is easy to find) and it hurts people who only have hotmail accounts.

2. Making registration more difficult/convoluted is going to deter the people who "just wander in" and so you lose a proportion of them that way too.

No matter how we do it whatever structure we put in place to screen muppets is going to stop a number of the "wanderers" hence my question to people as to how they found out about boards (if it was from a mate they could easily have been invited officially)

More AMPS? are you mad?

All the same, mods some people think are great others think are too forgiving or too harsh (occasionally I get both complaints about a mod at the same time!!)

hmmm... more thought-cpu cycles required....

DeV.

DeVore

I've no problem with banning open proxies, though you are right Repli, static ip's can be masked and I forgot that for a moment.
Still, it would cut out the moronic muppets from just signing up again.

DeV.

Celt

All the muppets are dbc in new york and a friend of his in ireland.

Frank Grimes

I think what Dustaz suggested was a good idea i.e a delay of a day or so before a newbie can post.

If someone actually wants to contribute something or ask a question etc. I'm sure they wouldn't mind the wait. Any potential spammer would probably forget/not bother etc. launching into a spam fest if they had to wait.

And I found boards after seeing people talk about it on ie.comp

Winters

How would the invte system work anywho? Will it ask the user who is going to register to enter the name of the user who invited him? cos if it was like that it wouldnt work....you could use both the invite system and my sytem of limiting the users posts ofr a few days for them to get used to how boards works etc.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

Gordon

Originally posted by Mercury_Tilt
Well after micro waving milk for 2:10 mins

Why was Micro waving at the milk?!

How about having more admins by the way? It seems that existing admins
are a bit swamped with stuff that Mods should be taking care of. I'm
sure you have some trusted people that would be cool with extra
responsibilities.

The friend register thing is a bit much I think, although I found out
by a "friend", well a work colleague actually(!)[:p Brian].

Tighter restraints on the actual registration is the key, be it 24/48
hours before posting, same IP address as previous new account can not
have more than one nick (spammer would have to dial up each time they
wanted a new nick and wait some time before posting). I think a watchful
eye over new accounts needs done too. There are a mass of accounts that
have one or none posts. If you had some kind of code that sniffed these
accounts for matching IP's of known offenders and flagged them for
Admin's attention maybe.

Was there not a curb on posting time after creating an account some
time ago, a year or so ago?? How did that help?

Bit tricky really, I think though that Moderation should be more
focussed, maybe the Admins should give the Moderators some kind of cool pep
talk, a rethink on what is good and bad moderation, like what those
"coaches" in America do before a big match
3... 2.. 1. BOARDS HO!

DeVore

3014 people used hotmail as their sign up email.

ISP's dont always give web access and you are then at their charging-structure mercy or they turn your account off and you lose your email address too. With hotmail you can shop around between isps and keep your email address...

/me puts on thinking head again.

The delay idea might work, I'll look into it. We'd have to code a check on the reply forum and work out the date difference (given the arse-about-tit way that mysql holds dates I dunno about that but its probably easy).

The invite option works by the user having a string they can give the invitee to use during the signup and you then "ok" them as being one of your invitees.
I'm going to look into it further.

Celt, have you ANYTHING to prove that or are you just stirring shít? DBC has been a member here for a long time, what makes you say that?


DeV.

Lenny

Originally posted by DeVore

If you are going to reply to this please also state how you first came accross boards.ie. Did a mate tell you about it?

DeV.

I saw it on the TFC server, IGN

DeVore

Hmmm, the referrer/invitee idea wont work. It doesnt double check it it just attributes the new user to the id in the link.
Hence if I wanted to assign a muppet-invitee to someone I just use their id in the link.
Its designed to reward people for getting new users not for keeping muppets out.

Theres no clear "probation" option but there might be a hack for it. I'll have a look.

DeV.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

KdjaCL

Delay in registry and more mods to the fastest moving boards.

Dustaz got it right with the heavy handed modding.

The older members will understand why its being done and the newer ones will leanr fats (but also put in the reg option) that its strict.


found
Looking for an irish games server other that CS.

kdja

ykt0di9url7bc3

how about helper mods! or another title.....Assistant Mods!

a person (long time boards member hand picked by forum Mod) who can only edit posts in their forum and only after they send an email to the forum moderator with the reason why its cack/spam/too insulting......(have it so they cant edit full mods posts...dont want to step on peoples toes) consider it a neighbourhood watch....

an enthusiastic bunch of assistants, with good comunication channels...eg a private assistant mod forum/regular IRC could hunt out muppets without dragging it infront of the admin board...


...more use of the "notify mod" button?

Boston

You really want to know how to stop Muppets?

First you have to clearly define what exactly a muppet is, certain people just rub other people the wrong way, most people except that each and every users had a good side and a bad side but some people just can’t see the good in someone and feel they are a waste of human flesh, I know this is how amp views me, and you know that’s just fine, he hasn’t deleted any of my posts or banned me, so his personal dislike for me hasn’t effect his job. So is someone a Muppet because of the way there are acting, or because you don’t like them.

Now closing down the site, doesn’t work, you’re potentially giving the Muppets what they want, to turn the internet into nothing more then ICQ irc happy spam **** holes.

Stopping new users doesn’t work either because the site would die a death very fast, it would be boring here without the occasion troll, the problem isn’t trolls but rather the lack of balance.

The buddy system sounds good, but all your doing is fostering this elitism crap among senior members which can be much more damaging then any Muppet. I’ve seen several sites go that way.

The ip thing wont work either, anybody who even browses the tech boards probably knows ways to get around that, I’ve several/

The situation looks pretty crap, you can’t go on this way and none of the other options seem to be visible. In steps Boston with the solutions, You gives mods the right to permanently ban users. I know this has been brought up before but here me out. You make it so if someone is temp banned from say 3 boards, then VB auto bans them from the site, this way you don’t have this crap,”He just hates me” your not giving the mod god like power because it would be a consensus of 3 or more mods, and to make everybody happy, you have admin an open unregistered forum, for people to appeal against their ban, and you could review the case at your leisure.

A mod couldn’t preempt ban though, that would be unfair, a thread would be started titles with the name of the user in question, the mod would lay at the reasons for a temp ban, and this would be standard procedure for all mod banning, if another mod then bans the same user they search for the threads, and set out their reasons as well. Then when the full ban comes into effect automatically all and admin has to do is review the thread, approve or dis approve the ban and bang no more muppet, its all quiet simple and it shifts the burden of more away from the admins onto the mods.

Of curse I’d be banned automatically since there’s several preemptive bans on me for boards I’ve never visited, but believe it or not I like this place, I like the job the admins are doing and I’ve always tried to make things easy on them, as much as I could anyway.

Typedef

Originally posted by Dustaz
1st

option 4.

Encourage heavier modding and iron fist adminery.

Option 3 would result in all of cork being banned eventually

J'accuse

Boston

Type you going to the boards beer, az is going as am i, you should turn up this time. The three of us can do battle with the evil forces of amp:D

Pigman

Personally I don't like the 'cutting off new membership' option because boards.ie will stagnate if there are no fresh or diverse opinions and views coming into it. If you’re happy to just make boards.ie a ‘super-friends’ club then by all means go and remove the registration procedure and I’ll bid you adieu but I for think it will only harm the content on the boards themselves.

The invite-only option isn't fair either because as has already been mentioned there are many legit people who post on boards even though they probably never met/irc'd/emailed anyone else on this board and don’t want to either. Add to this that casual droppers in might have a different set of interests to a lot of the ‘core’ group here. Sorry if that sounds like stereotyping - it is not meant sound so.

Also don't forget that most casual users will be unlikely to invite others if they know that they'll be judged badly/made to pay for the actions of others. I know I wouldn't recommend anyone to join if it meant I could possibly get kicked for their misdemeanors.

Another thing to take note of is that people won't sign up if they can't get the 'instant gratification' of posting. Therefore the 'cooling off' period is a non-starter too. I'd never heard of boards.ie and only stumbled here through visiting the phantomfm site and if I had had to wait 24 hours to post my first reply then I certainly wouldn't have bothered registering. Message forums are a lot like computer games, a lot of fun to interact with, not much fun to watch.

So what to do? From personal experience it is better to ignore an on-line troublemaker than it is to waste time reacting to them or constantly clearing up their trail. Perhaps it would be best to educate users in how to react to trolls and spammers rather than constantly deleting their spam content? Explain to users the ‘netiquette’ of dealing with possible trolls and make it clear that if a user is found to be continually reacting to taunts then it would be he/she who should be reprimanded! After all, spammers don’t hang around if too long if they aren’t getting a reaction. Don't forget that it's easier to get a legit user to do what you want than it is to get a spammer to fall into line.

Finally on re-reading this post I can see how it might make me sound like I am trying to look ‘cooler-than-thou’. Let me assure you all that this is not what I am trying to portray myself as. With this post I am just trying to get across the views of casual users on the periphery of the boards.ie community who might be affected by an overly radical reaction against trouble-makers. Thanks!

bonkey

OK...

I found out about boards when I was a regular player/admin on radox, and someone asked us to check out a thread on some bbs site called boards.ie, where some fscker was dissing our server.

To be quite honest, had my joining required some sort of "buddy vouching", then I would never have signed up. (Cue insults).

How can you stop muppets? Well, to be honest, you can't. You can check for uniqueness of IP (screws places like DNC for ppl to sign up from). You can check for uniqueness of mail addy (useless - getting a "spam address" is easy).

You can implement "cool-down" periods, but I'm not sure they will work either - how many people will really sign up for something they wont be allowed use for a period of time?

Personally, I dont know how to get rid of the muppets. Of course, if they are that big a problem, then is it that the mods arent doing a good job, or that boards has outgrown the number of admins it has at present and you need to increase the number or change the overall "management" structure to three tiers instead of two?

Ultimately, I dont think you can change much without significantly changing what boards.ie is. So, the question is not how to deal with the muppets, but rather what you want boards to become. Or...perhaps more easily...what you dont want boards to become.

strawberry

Muppets are a part of everyday life. Trying to cut them out completely sounds unrealistic, and if you clamp down too much you'll end up losing a lot of interesting people.
I vote for stricter modding.

-found out bout boards from CTYI, but have started using the rest of boards instead since CTYI became filled with spam and personal converations. Shudder. Now thats a muppet filled board.

Pigman

Originally posted by strawberry



CTYI, ... Now thats a muppet filled board.

Too right! I went over there out of curiosty and stuff such as ....

IDEA!!! why not start a kinda singles thread, where we match peoples compatability and set them up <CTYIers only... and their associates>. Yes... I am THAT desparate right now.

.... made me decide to leave it well alone.

gandalf

IMHO restricting members to invite or closing boards.ie from new members would be counterproductive.

I would go for the final option as is except for these following additions or enhancements.

(1) have a probation period of 2 weeks. In week 1 only allow the new user to post one reply/post per day, week 2 allow 2 posts per day and then unlimited.

(2) lose the post count and titles it is a encouragement to spam.

(3) Restrict members to one account and make it policy to ban some one totally that has multiple accounts (obviously after a clean up of existing multiple accounts with grace period for those with multiple accounts to choose the one they want to use). The only way to enforce this is to check by email address and to ban that address. Banning hotmail accounts is a policy that some other successful forums have done to good effect (thedvdforums.com) and I think should be used on boards.

Obviously you can change your email in the CP. Again have a period where that account cannot be used to post after the address is changed (24-48 hours).

(4) I also feel that the idiots/muppets are targeting boards where they think they will get away with posting rubbish. Maybe its time for some Iron Fist modding. I can give some tutorials if needed.

You will never cut down on muppets but if you impliement some of the above I think you will reduce the number and make their lives a little more complicated to carry out their petty and pointless self gratification.

BTW I don't know how much work it will take to impliement the above as I have no experience bar using of this BB system.

Gandalf.

PHB

I found out about boards.ie from a welcome message on IOL server ages ago, which I was told about by Sev on the boards.

What I find in boards.ie compared to other forums is that there is no lurking.
Normally when I first come to a new forum I wouldn't post for 2/3 weeks just so I can see whos who.
Perhaps, even though the hack would be lots of work each upgrade, a one week probabtion period at the start of each sign-up.

While it would deter the "stroll in poster" who just comes across, it wouldn't affect them as much as the other options.
And the amount of work you spent cleaning up after the muppets, it would be probably less work to impliment this probation period.

Boston

You allways have the option of have the waiting period on only certain forums, tech forums that dont have muppet troll problems could be excempt

Btw I found out about boards through that internet mailing board

Pablo

2 strikes and your out rule

a shame e-mail list

more admins or 'supermods'


... thank you and good night.

Giblet

Well I dunno if this has been done, ban multiple users on same email account, and allow mods to do their job. The moderator is the only one who should be allowed to post in admin when talking about removing users. This way not everyone will bother you DeVore. If there is serial accounts of muppetry on mulitple forums, and if the mods haven't done anything about them on their forum. Then You should step in. And give out to the Mods.
Most mods dont give a crap, and allow it to happen.
Im more annoyed by spammers with post counts of over 10 a day who talk absolute shíte.

[EDIT]
Stop people posting who have over 6 a day for eg:, in 1 day of use or something, until they are on for about a month.

yankinlk

Originally posted by Dustaz

How about making it so that you have to wait 24 hours before posting? This would cut out some of the instant gratification muppets pretty instantly.

i endorse this product and/or service

(simpole really, the only way to go)

Crash

Originally posted by strawberry
-found out bout boards from CTYI, but have started using the rest of boards instead since CTYI became filled with spam and personal converations. Shudder. Now thats a muppet filled board.

Grace, the CTYI board follows a particular muppet pattern, in that it starts off just after the 2nd session with sooo many muppets and then they gradually go back to their muppety lifestyles.

Pigman; most things said on that board are not meant to be taken seriously, but it does get out of hand when you get people just bitching bout stuff on it.

The one problem is that some of the people who come on here don't start off or intend to be muppets, but due to stupid comments, then some ****e from various people on boards, end up that way.

-Found out bout here through Fio-

Clintons Cat

how about doubling the amount of moderators?Given the 24/7 nature of boards is it reasonable to expect mods to be on hand at a moments notice?

secondly ban moderating complaints from the admin board as at the moment despite the validity or not of such threads as soon as one is created it generates a ton of spam as every one piles in with their own opinion.
Make it a Strict rule that disputes should be made via the pm system this should cut down on unnecessary paperwork and allow you admins to get to the nub of the matter in the shortest amount of time.that should also cut back on the number of Attention-Whore posts where the reason for a persons banning is apparent

new members hmm i was thinking along the lines of restricting new posters to maybe 5 posts a day whilst they are probationary until they are approved by the moderators.It might make people think a little more about the content of their posts

as for where i came from <points at Celt>
it wuz him

Johnny_the_fox

The user would apply for an account via post. The user would have give details - Name, address, email (an email address that they would have with their ISP. i.e philthehorse@freeISP.com another account i.e philthehorse@hotmail.com). The account would be opened when the application has arrived at boards.ie HQ and been checked.

[edit]
the application form - the user would give a member name of a existing user...

---

A friend told me about boards.ie

phreak

i like option 3. it could work.

Option 4 is ok if you get more mods/super mods etc

(found boards through online gaming. joined because i wasnted to post on the cs board)

Hobbes

Originally posted by DeVore
Ok, firstly there is another possibility.

5. Wait for static ips for all. Ie: when static ips come around (with broadband etc) we can just ban that ip.
(I dont mind banning muppets once, its the reoccurance of it thats depressing).

Broadband does not have fixed IP's.

Can you read someones MAC address instead? That way you ban them at the machine level.

Hobbes

Admin voting system. Simple.

Muppet X posts something which they shouldn't of.

Admin X comes along, not the moderator for that board, but they click a little button and it flags the person. There should be a thumbs up, thumbs down option.

If a certain amount of Admins (not community moderators) click on the same person, that person is locked out from posting to anywhere.

The lock out doesn't stop them from posting, and to them they believe they have posted to the forum (they will be able to see their own post), just no one else will see the replies. When say an uber admin comes on (forget what you's call yourselves) you get a message marking the user and shows all posts since they were locked out. Up to the uber admin to unlock the person.

Note: At this stage if the original post wasn't questionable or their posts seem to be of a non-muppet nature the person is activated and everyone can see their posts. It also flags what admins marked the guy so you can remove the option from the admin if they are abusing it.

If they were acting the muppet, get Cloud to create a "12-Click" button (surprised it still takes 12 clicks and get Regi to break it by adding "Hit the road jack" music to the button.

This does not stop the initial post from being deleted though thats up to the forum moderator.

This allows the muppet to give themselves enough rope to hang themselves while innocent people are transparent to what's going on.

It is also for dealing with blatant muppets. For example someone posts something stupid on the RPG board. Myself and Rev take offense so we flag them then ban them from the board. Dev comes in after a hard nights drinking and sees the muppet flagged, notices that it was a once off and reactivates the person. However that person is still banned from RPG.

chernobyl

Originally posted by Hobbes
Admin voting system. Simple.

Muppet X posts something which they shouldn't of.

Admin X comes along, not the moderator for that board, but they click a little button and it flags the person. There should be a thumbs up, thumbs down option.

Karma to you Hobbes....

Puck

I think the invite only option is a good idea tbh. Considering you don't advertise anyway a lot of people find Boards through their friends who are already memebers anyway.

I found out about Boards.ie from topgold who posted here about the "Find John A Home" campaign. I'm John btw.... and I found a home. He was my lecturer at the time and put me up in his place and helped me out untill I found a place in Dublin while I was doing work experience as part of my college course.

So I found this place through a friend and I think a lot of others have too. I also didn't post as soon as I found Boards. I took time to suss the place out first. I think if anyone was really serious about joining this community then they would take time before posting. So I think that a waiting period before allowing people to post would also be a good idea.

The invite thing could be done by having to get an existing user to log in in order to get to the registration page. For instance there could be an "Add A Member" option somewhere in the user cp... or something like that.

I also thought that karma was a great idea when it was around.