Troll prevention

Stickies just don't work, so I have an idea...

When a new member joins, have an automatic pm sent to them. The troll says "OMG my first PM my name must sound so l33t that somebody PM'd me right away"

In the PM, something like-

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Welcome to AO!
Remember, it takes 10 posts before you can get your custom avatar, and you will start out with 10 Antipoints, and the AP's you give out won't be worth anything until you recieve some. So start making some high quality posts!
Here are some security threads to get you started in our forums-

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Then we have a couple FAQ threads, AP threads and some of the more informational threads listed in the PM so they know that hacking hotmail isn't appropriate, and that we discourage threads that look like IRC channels.

What do you think? I call it the welcome message.

....I'm amazed this hasn't been done already. I personally know this will work well b/c I know two people that were new recently and they were total retards till I gave them links to a couple of the stickies that I picked out for them to read. That helped a lot. I also think the number of stickies we send in the PM should be limited to three b/c people get discouraged when they get hit with a huge amount of info at one time. I'll edit this post in a sec providing my suggestion for what stickies should be read first...I have a txt file somewhere that I just copy and paste to someone every now and then.... /me wanderz off

*edit*
Can't find that txt file ANYWHERE but I know it had these:
Skim this massive one by Ennis.
This is a guide to antipoints by moxnix.
This is the guide to netiquette by valhallen.

I like this. There is one drawback however: some members turn off receiving PMs. So the code will have to be in place to force them to receive this single PM.

Well couldn't there be a banner like the one you get when you're close to being banned [or when you give out too many positive APs]? That way it won't be missed, and those that completely ignore even this method aren't worth any more to bother with anyway.

Or an automatic e-mail sent to the new user's inbox.

But I really like the idea, and I hope it gets some attention from the powers that be. :)

One more idea...

When you first join, how about an optional "AO Initiation quiz"

Make it like 20 questions, and have redundant questions like "Do AO members try to hack hotmail"?

or

Really tough questions from the stickies that you would have to search for?

The reward would be an extra AP dot? Or a gold star? To the members that care about that kinda stuff (some members join just to earn AP's IMO) It would be really effective. I would expect near everyone who joins that knows about the AP system would take the quiz.

Hmmmmmmm,

Some interesting thoughts there Soda~ and I appreciate your thoughts on what might be done to improve the quality around here.

I am not so sure that it would work with Trolls though?

From what I have seen in the relatively short time that I have been here, the majority of trolls seem to join for the single purpose of causing disruption, and seem to get "shot down" pretty quickly, so I wonder if they would pay any attention? somehow I doubt it :(

However, as a means of improving standards, making members welcome, and helping new members make effective posts, I think you have some excellent ideas.

I can see MsM's reservation and wonder if the registration process were changed slightly so you have to acknowledge a confirmation e-mail, or maybe have the power to turn off PMs as a site benefit rather than straight off, might help?

just a few thoughts :)

:) Good idea. I think it should also contain, at the very top in bold type

This is not a hacking/cracking site. You are at the wrong site if you intend to ask hacking cracking questions. You will be auto. banned if you ask here.


[edit] I think that this message should be on the main page also, for people who are guests, they will see this message and prolly wont join to ask their ip, scanning, password cracking questions.[edit]

Actually, I think that this or one of the varients listed above is very needed. As nihil stated, it won't help the real trolls, but it will help us identify them.

A new user, who just doesn't know, will be pointed at stickies and FAQ's that will help them, and thus make a lot better first posts and such. The trolls, well there is just no help available.

Great idea, and one I would like to see implemented.

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I think that this message should be on the main page also, for people who are guests, they will see this message and prolly wont join to ask their ip, scanning, password cracking questions.

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Sign out and have a fine ****ing look at the main page :p

For god sakes besides maybe bringing in some actual content and makeing the general look & feel of the site a bit better... I wish you guys would stop bitching and just leave AO alone and stop adding these stupid ass features that peaple will forget about within a day, week, or month or so. I think the AP system works perfectly in these situations... its bad enought with MODs interfering by closeing threads so that alot of these guys don't get a full effect (if any) of the AP system. This is good enought of a second chance for anyone.

Besides, how to hack this and that yada yada blah blah blah questions are almost non-existant now in retrospect. This solves nothing... trust me after posting something dumb peaple DO get the point.

:)

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Sign out and have a fine look at the main page

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Yeah it does say that, but IMO needs to be bigger and more in your face :deal:

Besides, I couldn't tell you the last time I even seen the front page of this site. Even when I have to sign in (after I have cleared my cookies) I just sign in quickly and don't really see any thing on that page besides the sign in block.

Thats why a pm or email with these suggestions in them would be benificial.

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Yeah it does say that, but IMO needs to be bigger and more in your face

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Or maybe it could look like this:
http://www.stealthbot.net/april1/
I think it looks good the way it is. And I think the AP system works pretty good for the hotmail hackers and what not. I haven't seen anyone ask a question like that and make it more than a day.
Maybe sending the PM's will help those who do wanna stick around for a little while though.

OMG, man. That stealthbot site is ghastly :P While reading it it seemed as though every word ended in "s". And on another point, I think that there should be something that checks, when members are choosing a user name, that their name is pronouncable :)

ac

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Originally posted here by Soda_Popinsky
Stickies just don't work, so I have an idea...

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I said it in another forum, but here we go. We should make those stickies automatically bumped by the system, say once in a month. Now they won't be missed easily, especially by newbies who are too lazy to read them before posting in a new forum. Seniors will be "softly" reminded without having to actually reading the auto-bumped stickies.

Peace always,
<jdenny>

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Originally posted here by jdenny
I said it in another forum, but here we go. We should make those stickies automatically bumped by the system, say once in a month. Now they won't be missed easily, especially by newbies who are too lazy to read them before posting in a new forum. Seniors will be "softly" reminded without having to actually reading the auto-bumped stickies.

Peace always,
<jdenny>

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I said something very similar to that sometime last week. One of the newer posts that was made sticky I thought should have been left to float around for awhile b4 it was made sticky b/c I know people won't read it *because* it says sticky next to it so, of course there can't be anything interesting in there. ;)