tell them to write a sentence that contains the words they're, there, and their, and use all three of them in a contextually accurate manner.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Discussion about the aussie.zone instance itself
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Fair enough.
With beehaw defederating to protect their community, I was going to sign up here so I can use 'Local' as an Aussie bellwether.
If it were me, I would ask if they were Australian and add extra weight to the application if they were (in case you get more and more international applications). Bonus points for a trick question that requires an answer that is uniquely Australian like "chazwazzers" but according to Frinkiac, it's not spelled like that. I've failed the test.
Ok this thread has twisted my arm. Effectively immediately new signups require admin approval.
I'm not sure this is the right approach. Manual admin approval won't stop people pretending they're not going to be arses during the signup process.
You did the right thing in this instance. User was clearly a troll and has been justly banned. That's a good outcome. That's the system working exactly as it should!
But right now, this Lemmy instance is tiny. I'm trying desperately to promote it because I want to see the same great discussion on here that I have become accustomed to on Reddit (/r/brisbane particularly), but it's hard. Lemmy is hard to convince people to try out because it's confusing. Adding an extra hurdle in the way is only going to make that worse.
I'd say keep signups fairly easy, but be very active in moderation when users prove unwelcome. Putting hurdles in the way of legitimate users is only going to stunt any potential growth.
keep signups fairly easy, but be very active in moderation when users prove unwelcome.
Ideally yes, this is the plan. However I can't be everywhere at once, and we'll need more mods :)
I agree with Zagorath's sentiment, at present it seems getting more users probably on balance outweighs the risk of the odd troll. However, having to answer a simple question as part of signing up doesn't seem to be too bad at the moment (I signed up before so don't know what the experience is). We don't even need to verify emails at this stage to sign up.
Mature communities don't have major trolling problems because users tend to know not to feed the troll. They're just not engaged and as a result lose air pretty quickly. Forums are a good example - anything that isn't on topic or just clearly a troll is quickly shut down, generally not by moderators but by other users, and there is enough nuance to know what is a valid debate (even if super heated or robust).
"Beating a test" also gives some sense of entitlement, and also it does not stop other users from other instances trolling.
With that in mind, what about a question such as "Do you agree:
- not to feed the trolls
- to report any offensive behaviour
- to look out for your fellow members?"
This is not to weed out the trolls but rather to remind users in such a fashion to nurture a "mature" community that self-regulates.
The current signup question is "Are you a bot, troll, terrorist or Nazi? Do you intend to be nice and respectful?". I've been accepting pretty much any answer. The point isn't the answer itself.
The point isn’t the answer itself.
Replies "yes", still gets accepted haha
Can you have image-based questions? Something like "What comes to your mind on seeing this?"
The barrier to entry is small because there's no "right" answer (eg. Ned Kelly, Bushranger, Outlaw, Bloke with a gun and silly helmet, etc.) but it still goes a long way toward proving that there's half a human on the other end.
I've turned on the captcha for signups, but disabled admin approvals for now. There have been instances of mass automated signups on several lemmy instances... so one or the other of these needs to be enabled for now.
Current signup question is "Will you break the rules, be obnoxious or otherwise a negative presence on this site?" I'm open to suggestions for improvements :)
Off topic: weird bug. I'm seeing your post as having 5 upvotes and -1 downvotes. Not 1 downvote, negative one downvote.