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Young Writers Society


Possible changes to the chatbar



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Sat Aug 03, 2013 5:55 pm
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Nate says...



Short version: Require 5 reviews before allowing access to the chatbar.

Currently, the chatbar allows you to chat with anyone who is currently on YWS. This is different from a lot of sites where you can only chat with people who you're friends with.

I don't want to change that, but there has been occasional abuse of it, and as YWS grows, those who abuse it will almost certainly increase in number. By abuse, I mean a number of things ranging from asking strangers to review your work to annoying someone.

In the long time ago, we had a similar problem with the chatroom since there were members from another website at the time that liked to troll YWS. We solved it by requiring at least 25 reviews to access the chatroom, although that eventually came down to just 5. Nowadays, there is no restriction on access to chat for two reasons: (1) the trolls disappeared, and (2) we have a lot of chat mods now.

In the case of the chatbar, trolls aren't an issue, but there is nonetheless some abuse of it. And it's not possible to moderate.

So, what I'm thinking is to require 5 reviews before allowing access to the chatbar. It would not completely eliminate abuse, but it would reduce it by quite a lot.
  





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Sat Aug 03, 2013 7:49 pm
StoneHeart says...



Okay, this'll probably do one of two things:

A: It'll alienate the newbies and make them quit real fast.

B: It'll give them something to work toward. It'd be this for me. :P
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I spread my dreams under your feet . . .

. . . tread softly for you tread on my dreams.


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Sat Aug 03, 2013 7:57 pm
Rydia says...



I like this idea! I like that everyone on YWS can chat to anyone else and I get to meet a lot of cool people that way. However, it does worry me when we get people on the site who have come only with the intention of chatting people up or leaning on a high member base with an open chat. I think this would make chat safer and not take too long for a genuine member to fulfil.
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Sat Aug 03, 2013 8:32 pm
StellaThomas says...



I doubt it will alienate people. It's not as if it's going to ban them from the forums. It didn't alienate anyone with chat back when you needed twenty five reviews.

I think it would just mean that the bar was just for actual members and not people who just come to use/abuse the chatbar.

Now, my only concern would be for people who contact mods on the chat bar asking for help. But I'm sure they can think of another way to do that, like we used to in the old days!
"Stella. You were in my dream the other night. And everyone called you Princess." -Lauren2010
  





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Sat Aug 03, 2013 8:47 pm
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Nate says...



New member alienation is unlikely just because it'd be unlikely they'd even know a chatbar exists. However, current member alienation is possible for those that are members now but have done less than 5 reviews. So, what I'll do is apply this going forward only.

On contacting mods, one thing that I'd really like to do (but requires a lot of time to setup) is a "message the mods" link for specific sections of the site. So if you're browsing poetry and have a question or need to report something, you'd click "message the mods" and send a message to the poetry mods. That message would show up in a moderator control panel, from where it could then be reviewed by any of the poetry mods.

I think it'd be very effective, and very useful for everyone. If YWS continues growing as it is now, it'll probably be necessary as well within about six to eight months.

At any rate, I'll wait about another 24 hours before doing anything, but as of right now, requiring 5 reviews before seeing the chatbar looks likely to happen.
  





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Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:50 pm
Rosendorn says...



So if you're browsing poetry and have a question or need to report something, you'd click "message the mods" and send a message to the poetry mods. That message would show up in a moderator control panel, from where it could then be reviewed by any of the poetry mods.


That would require mods to get into the habit of checking the MCP *cough*

One thing that would be nice is one post on the forums as well. Then we can catch the very annoying alts simply made to get around bans just a little bit easier.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

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Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:57 pm
StellaThomas says...



Nate, I was going to suggest something like that to serve that purpose although I did figure it'd be hard to do and time consuming. However, were it doable, I think it really would be beneficial!
"Stella. You were in my dream the other night. And everyone called you Princess." -Lauren2010
  





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Sun Aug 04, 2013 2:16 am
ImHero says...



I think adding a report button on the top would be ideal. If the user get two reports then mute them automatically until they have done 25 reviews. Also when they send their first messages to a new member- say a message like "this is a new member, if he/she is abusive please click this button" Most of the new members that I have seen are full of respect for the website- I don't see the need yet to punish them all.

& also, you idea is good too. :)
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