I think we need to add a couple more barriers to prevent spam. What about limiting posting to X amount of posts, or for new users or something?
I think we need to add a couple more barriers to prevent spam. What about limiting posting to X amount of posts, or for new users or something?
This is a brainstorm post, not a peer-reviewed paper on moderating fediverse :) Mods with finite resources cannot compete with automated systems. The signal to noise ratio will keep increasing if a new account can post 10 items immediately they join. The alternative could be restricted signups (signups by invitations, recommendations) even though a low hanging fruit could be temporal throttling for new users. Something got to give in the long run.
I think signing up by invite is not so good because it will prevent people to join easily, but I honestly can’t think of someone making more than 10 posts just after joining and them not being a bot, and if you aren’t I don’t think it’s a big issue to wait a bit more. Obviously the best option would be to have more mods, but there are a lot of communities with dead admins, and the ones that have active admins don’t have more than one. Even if they have more than two, they generally live pretty close and their time zones make at least an eight hour gap where no one will be active.
It’s honestly USUALLY not that difficult to dedicate sufficient time to prune a community here as needed within reasons. Beside a well moderated community is less likely to be spammed in the long run considering it will be less efforts than it’s worth.
Problems USUALLY arises because there’s a lack of moderation, not because new users should be pulled back or from being signed up. This is more evident in game servers and believe me I can tell them apart what’s a well oiled game server from one that isn’t. Same goes for online communities.