Private and article forums

I think we should get a few forums that are private. I mean that after a certain use of the forums like a # of posts, or a number of days (like 30) the forum opens to you. That weeds out the newbies asking about hacking hotmail. Play with the specifics to get it better but the idea. Also, we should have an article forum where only JP can post articles written by people. That way it doesn't get cluttered. There is getting to be way too much traffic on this site for it's organization. It needs to be improved.

My two cents.

I've only been on the boards for a few weeks, mostly in IRC because I don't have all the answers to the questions posted here...but I whole heartedly agree. I've been on many message boards in the past...for many other topics...and they all have the same problem(s) with new users or users who change nicks often.

It will cut down some of those nick changes (well, not really if you're willing to wait...but I don't think anyone has the time to let nicks hang out for a # of days).

Maybe instead of being completely private, it would be read-only to those new users, that way they couldn't post, but like me they would at least be able to read the information.

kick lamers asking 4 hotmail and other l4m3 stuff

I don't agree. If somebody wants to be a member here, they should have access to the whole site. Of course, there are exceptions, such as hahbris, vaZe, Eating-Scarlett, and Seb-G. As for separating the newbies from the real users, that's what the newbie questions forum is for. Besides, we all want to see who is asking to hack Hotmail, because then they can be corrected quickly instead of being helped by other newbies first.

How about only being allowed to post in certain forums if you've got a certain number of antipoints? You could make the forum read-only for everyone else.

Unfortunately, if you were to disallow people to post who had less than x amt of antipoints, then
1. It would be much harder for them to gain antipoints, and
2. Someone new to this site could be an uberexpert in computers, and have the answer to some questions that noone else does, but since their new, they don't have enough antipoints to post.
So, where you can post, according to your antipoints or how long you've been here, is not that great of an idea.

I totally agree with stflook on this one every member should have access to the whole site, plus it's fun to read and respond to them.:p

Quote:

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Originally posted by xstonedogx
How about only being allowed to post in certain forums if you've got a certain number of antipoints? You could make the forum read-only for everyone else.

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But what if they want help on that subject?

Here's my idea... Individual users, or groups of them, can create forums. Now, creating a forum could have strict membership requirements, but posting in the forum or viewing... you have to be invited by a founder. I think this could work pretty well, although it might detract from this being a 'public' site. Perhaps read-only to nonmembers...

So person A, B, C, decide to make a forum, they make it, give it a name, description, and get moderator rights for that forum. Any of them can then invite or remove people from the allowed-to-post list. The forum additions must be approved by a site admin.

This way you can get specialized forums that are outside of the default forum scopes, and you are allowed to post (or not) purely on actual human evaluation... without stressing the site admins (JP & co.) too much.

EDIT: POLL ON PRIVATE FORUMS HERE.

If a person couldnt post in a group withou a min. number of antipoints I would be up sheetcreek without a paddle...I keep getting knocked down points...I really wish people would tell me why they gave me pos or neg antipoints so that I could better my posting...Im pretty clueless when it comes to posting as if everyone couldnt see that already...

Greetings All:

Great idea, and a good discussion. The Private Forums now exist!