New members

[brokenman]

New members must make at least 4 posts before becoming a fully registered member.

[Hamza]

Okay , I have already 4 posts

[Ahau]

I may need one more...

ETA: There we go!

[Tonio]

@jayflood a.k.a brokeman? You did not state that in th rules Will try to post more to get the 4 needed

Done!!! Please disregard the message above .

[jcas1411]

Thanks guys for getting your forum up so quickly

[ahz]

@brokenman
Hmmm..., I just switched over from slax forum to this one. Can you explain a little bit more what exactly means "fully registered member". What is the difference to a "registered user"? Do my replies from old slax forum not count? I just want to say something if I can say something, this avoids no rubbish posts.

[Hamza]

@ahz

A "fully registered member" is an user with more of 4 messages in the forum , it's an active user !

Regards,

[X-Factor]

are you saying those who post less than 4 will be ousted ???

[Engel Der Risse]

That sounds like it could be problematic for individuals who only post on rare occasions due to not wanting to post useless dribble, whether it actually is or not.

[ahz]

To qualify someone as an "active user" or a "fully registered member" by counting his posts (per day/week/month???) is totally senseless. Its that easy to produce large amounts of trash posts just to push the counters. Not my way..., sorry. More clarification needed!!!

[att]

I second that what AHZ says. Anyway I'm the same member ATT from the slax forum, and thus people should know me.

[ElderGeek]

While having to post 4 times to become an "active" member does not prevent someone from posting junk 4 times to upgrade their membership. However, it does keep out the riff-raff who will not take the time to create that many posts.

The real question to me is how much traffic the site has. I think the slashdot moderation system works pretty well. Every post has a value from -1 to 5. By default users post at 0. People with moderator points can moderate posts up or down. If you posts tend to be moderated up, when you post your posts will start with a value of 1 or 2. By default Unregistered users and most Registered users only see posts that are rated 2 or above. So a post has to be moderated up twice by more experienced and respected members to even be visible to most folks. This keeps all the -1 (very bad posts) 0 and 1 posts out of sight. So the uninitiated tend to see the "best" posts. Active users tend to get moderator points that they have a certain number of days to use. Most registered users can "meta-moderate", where they can look at 5 random moderations and can agree or disagree with how they were moderated. This meta-moderation helps catch people who abuse the moderation system. Regular users can set what level they want to view the posts at.

If you are in a hurry, you can set it to 5, so you only see the most excellent posts. At 3 if you want to see the best but have some time. Or as someone once said, "Free Your Mind, read at -1".

The whole idea being if you have enough traffic you can let users moderate themselves. So you don't have to spend all of your time moderating people. You don't have to face complaints about showing favoritism or unjustly punishing someone. Everyone is allowed to play, the trolls even have a chance to have their say. But the innocent newcomers will tend not to see the trolls at -1.

It is either that, or you someone gets to be considered a great leader AND a horrible dictator as they moderate posts, deleting what they think is bad, protecting what they think is good.

[brokenman]

Newly registered members have slightly less functionality. After 4 posts you are fully registered with more functionality. That's just the default system for phpbb however i like the method suggested by eldergeek. Sounds much better as in general users can be trusted.

I've bumped status for Ahz & Tonio. Please if you feel you should have higher rank let me know, i am bound to miss people registering from slax forum and i would like all those older members to have higher ranks. If you'd like to be a moderator and think you will be around here alot, let me know. We need some moderators.

[ahz]

Thanks for the explanation ElderGeek. I looked through the "User Control Panel" in order to find something where I can change the threshold so that I can set my own limit if I have time to "Free Your Mind" :-) Can you give a hint where I can do so?

[fanthom]

be aware that "higher rank" means more responsibility - we are expecting for people with high rank to be active here and give help to newcomers (which is a hard job)