What's Up With The New Members?

[John Faulkner]

Hi,

Questions for Eva2000 and the moderators:

1.
Why are members who have joined after 15.09.07 not included on the members list?

2.
Why is it that whenever I click on a new member to see their profile, a screen comes up saying that I'm not allowed to access it? If I remember correctly, one of the moderators suggested in one of my Introduction threads that I PM new members to let them know that I've made such threads for them - but that's hardly a possibility if I a) don't know who the new members are from the members list and b) can't even see their bloody profiles.

3.
Have you checked that new members have the capability to post? I found some stats on AnimeBoards here:

http://www.big-boards.com/board/12/

Here is the graph on new members over the last yr:



The hard facts say that the number of new members signing up per week has roughly doubled compared to last year. This year alone, ~550 new members have signed up. Great. However, none have posted ANYTHING.

So what's going on here? Are these new members robots? Or real people who happen to have an aversion to typing and/or an inability to string sentences together?

Look at the latest member - name: "PhoneLookup". Unless this is a person who likes looking up phones, this sounds suspiciously like an advert-machine.

[Schizm]

I think it might be your fault.....

[eva2000]

It's manual member moderation that slows things down - only verified members get listed on memberlist.

Alot of new members maybe comment/spammers I do pick up quite a few when i check out the email domain and username and ip addresses they register with (all done manually for now) and then add them to ban list etc.

Yes I've been slack in this regard as other stuff have come up taking priority unfortunately

[John Faulkner]

It's manual member moderation that slows things down - only verified members get listed on memberlist.

Alot of new members maybe comment/spammers I do pick up quite a few when i check out the email domain and username and ip addresses they register with (all done manually for now) and then add them to ban list etc.

Yes I've been slack in this regard as other stuff have come up taking priority unfortunately

Firstly, thanks for the response: good to see we're proponents of reasonable dialogue.

From your response, members who have signed up post-15.09.07 have not been verified yet. Just to clarify:

Does this mean that those members who signed up after 15.09.07 cannot post?

The reason for that question is twofold:

Firstly, if these members cannot post, then it's pretty much pointless for me to focus any more energy in making introduction threads until they are verified.

Secondly, if manual verification is being employed, does that mean only you are responsible for the verification? How about delegating this task to the moderators if you are too busy? This is a prime opportunity to make use of the ~10 moderator taskforce which you have at your immediate disposal. Given that post rates are so low, this would give them something to do other than twiddling their thumbs or practicing deep meditation when they come here.

I think it might be your fault.....

Any post here is always a cause for celebration, a momentous occasion, so I must applaud your reply.

However, at the same time, I am disappointed by your response. As a first generation member and with a track record of subversive activities which have attempted to destabilize the prevailing messageboard hierarchical structure, I expected you to fully embrace the revolutionary spirit and agenda that is sweeping AnimeBoards at present.

Instead, you seem to be creating centripetal forces which implicitly endorse the current messageboard epoch.

You have the chance to become Robin Hood (or Friar Tuck even), but you're going down the path of the Sheriff of Nottingham. You stopped Riddling and stepped into the Batmobile.

Where's your passion and pride?

[Schizm]

You have the chance to become Robin Hood (or Friar Tuck even), but you're going down the path of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Who wouldn't want to be the Sheriff?

[John Faulkner]

Who wouldn't want to be the Sheriff?

Who'd want to get stabbed through the heart by Kevin Costner?


Going back to the can members who have joined after 15.09.07 post question, I strongly suspect that the answer is no.

The last new member to make an Introductions thread out of their own own free will was a member who joined up on 12.09.07. Afterwards, there was silence, despite numerous eye-catching threads I made. Even at its nadir,, AnimeBoards always had the odd person making threads in the Introductions forum. It's hard to believe that the ~1,000 new members (see graph in first post) who have signed up since 12.09.07 have not posted anything in that forum if they were able to.

Also, I strongly suspect that this has compounded the downward posting rate trend. Referring to the graph at http://www.animeboards.com/showthread.php?t=60530, the posting rate has dropped off post-September. To compare like-for-like figures for the months Sep-Feb, we'd need figures from Sep 08-Feb 09, but the figures for Mar 08 compared to Mar 07 already show significant decreases in posting rate.

Now, I'm just going to work through the consequences of a policy which allows members to sign up, but doesn't allow them to post. Firstly, you're going to be losing the goodwill of a lot of people, which will militate against a future recovery. Secondly, when you do come round to verifying these members, they'll probably have left for good. This will mean a whole bunch of "ghost" members who just clog up the system and distort figures, making board management harder. Thirdly, it's going to be an immediate and ongoing suppressive force on the post rate.

So I think it is a matter of urgency that this policy is revised.

[eva2000]

Yes unless i approve the new members, they can't post, hence the decline but from what I've looked up about 35-45% could possibly be automated spam/comment spamming bots and not real users from the usernames, ip and email domain searches I manually look up.

I agree it needs revision and that's what new vBulletin forum software upgrades will help with but as I stated other obligations have taken priority over these upgrades for various reasons.

[Black_Knight]

Who wouldn't want to be the Sheriff?

Yippie ki-yay, Mother Fucker

[John Faulkner]

Yippie ki-yay, Mother Fucker

There's only one more thing that we, as the AnimeBoards Revival Progressive Alliance (ABRPA), request from our prime minister Eva2k at present: that of a rough estimate of the projected date for implementation of the revival stategies.

Our slogan: "Things can only get better - and it will."

[Pengi_Ken-Ohki]

when individuals start referring to themselves in the plural, its time to action. He could have a knife or a gun!

[John Faulkner]

when individuals start referring to themselves in the plural, its time to action. He could have a knife or a gun!

The "we" refers to myself, Black_Knight and all others who would like to see an AnimeBoards Revival.

Mar 08:

The ABRPA holds a sustained political dialogue with the incumbent president Eva2k. Top of the agenda is the low posting rate of the virtual sovereign territory known as AnimeBoards (AB). The ABRPA produces historical statistics on AB's demography and queried the activities of the various ministers (moderators).

After days of intense reasoning, a mutual consensus on the causes of the low posting rate was established by both parties. However, it remains to decide the timeline for a substantial re-engineering of the socioeconomic landscape of AB (what is commonly referred to as the "AB Revival").

The ABRPA awaits an answer from President Eva2k. All sectors of the population await results for this latest round of negotiations with high anticipation.

[DraniX]

This season's Top Chef is starting to grow on me. Except that there aren't a lot of likable characters. Still good in its own ways.