we've been dealing with an uptick in low-effort spam, child porn, and meta-drama from users who contribute nothing of value.

>>52160
The PoW token idea was interesting but is too complex to implement.
Here's a simpler solution: just password protect the entire site

How it would work:

Homepage, articles, and connect page remain public (people can read our content and find the chatrooms)
Everything else requires a site password to access
Password available by joining IRC/XMPP/Mumble and asking
We can rotate the password if it leaks to public indexes

Why it should work:

Instantly kills scrapers (LLM and otherwise)
Adds friction for drive-by spammers
Forces normies to learn how to use actual protocols

if you can't figure out how to join XMPP to get a password, you probably weren't going to contribute quality posts anyway

Downsides:

Slower site growth
Might make us seem "too exclusive"
Password will eventually leak (but we can change it)

The site's tagline is "the sophisticated man's creative playground" but we've been getting a lot of unsophisticated men posting here as of late. This would align our access model with our actual values. People who are willing to jump through one hoop will be more invested than people who aren't.

this has been posted on /g/
https://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/106911558#p106912045

>some very small imageboards also have email verification or special captchas third worlders have no idea how to solve because the subject is niche

You could make it invite-only. Require users to send you an e-mail with their reasons for wanting to join. But at the moment, to be honest, there aren't many reasons to post here. I myself, if it wasn't for the fact that I can post anonymously and without filling a captcha, I don't know if I'd be posting here. The whole point of this forum is to talk about how crappy the internet has become, which is bound to piss some people off, but on the other hand it's not enough to form a community.

If I were you, this is what I'd do: I'd close the forum temporarily, keep posting articles and accepting submissions, use the IRC or e-mail to stay in touch with readers, and think, really think, about what I want to do with this site. Closing the forum might seem a drastic decision, but at it is now, it's not worth the stress of having to deal with spammers. Then, once the site has grown a bit and I have a clear vision for it, I'd consider re-opening the forum, if there's a real need for it.

Sucks but hey at least you will get to keep the moderation 100% opaque. Whatever's good for the site I suppose.

>>52281
fuck off back to ur honeypot brah ive been witnessing u post shit for the past week that gets deleted. 99% of sites on the internet have "opaque moderation" cope and seethe

>>52282
Nope. This site is a farce: it positions itself as a rebellion against the corporate Internet, but has all the same problems. Users here have no more freedom, no more knowledge, and certainly no more welcome by the mods and admin than any other shithole.

I've seen real effortposts get deleted with no explanation, not just my own. Generalize what was deleted all you want, it won't change what's happening.

My best estimation is that the admin is a teenager with zero experience administrating a forum, and picked the earliest and most eager participants to both moderate the board and let their words inform his decisions. He must think that the shittification of the Internet happened by random chance, not through calculated actions taken by subordinates.

To the admin: I don't think this is your fault, and it's not too late to change direction. Consider the possibility that your moderators have different priorities than you, and realize that's often a bad thing. Communities aren't built by closing doors. You got visitors to this site by promoting ideas, now you have ideologues who agree with you on most issues but are happy to burn your site to the ground if it means leaving room for more promising platforms to prosper. My fight is not so different than yours.

>>52276
This would have a horribly negative impact on site growth and might even dissuade existing users from coming back here if they don't want to join any chatrooms just to obtain a (potentially) temporary right to access the site for an unspecified amount of time. It is a good idea in theory but the effectiveness of it depends very heavily on how it is executed. The goal would be forcing engagement with our actual communication infrastructure (IRC/XMPP/Mumble) rather than treating this as just another disposable imageboard/BBS.

>>52290
I appreciate you choosing to take time to write this out. Let me address:

>I've seen real effortposts get deleted with no explanation, not just my own.

I've just reviewed every deletion from October 5-17. The moderation log (which I have full access to) shows me the following:

>35+ posts of spam in a single thread (>>52018 'HELP')
>3 threads with variations of nigger as the sole title/content
>Multiple AI-generated replies to thread topics (I assume posted in protest to >>##52174)
>Posts consisting of 'you are brown/jeet/nigger' towards moderation (probably in response to previous deletions)
>Test posts for HTML/formatting exploits (I think I deleted these because I was done testing sanitization fixes?)

All of these deletions, excluding the test posts were also posted from a Tor proxy.

If you're referring to something specific that you believe was wrongly deleted, I'm going to need actual details. An approximate date and the overall context/topic would be great. I can and will restore posts if moderation was wrong but I can't casually spend time investigating vague claims.

>My best estimation is that the admin is a teenager with zero experience

I'm open to criticism, but it needs to be specific and actionable. "Your moderators might have different priorities" - okay, give me an example. Show me a specific deletion you disagree with and explain why.

>Consider the possibility that your moderators have different priorities than you

This is the most interesting point you've made. I do take this seriously, but here's the problem: you were directly invited to discuss this in our chatrooms by one of those moderators (>>52275), and you never showed up. I would have been present to see it occur in real-time (I keep my client open in the background and usually respond to notifications immediately), but I see no discussion that could have possibly taken place that was about moderation. If you're actually concerned, why did you not take the invitation to discuss it directly?

>>52291
Yeah let me just link you to the modlog entry... oh wait.

I don't save my posts nor do I care to remember them well. I actually remember shitposts a lot better than most effortposts I make. Not just here, but elsewhere too.

Herein lies the critical benefit of a public modlog. I'm sure you know by now I have no problem with shitposts being deleted. The real reason you should absolutely have a public modlog is because it deters glowies from deleting posts to prevent conversations from developing in directions harmful to their mandates. You might say "that won't happen," I say there is already evidence of it, though whether it's actual glowies or retarded teens on their first power trip is open to interpretation. If you think you can just filter out the glowies, you can't. You can only lower the ceiling of power they can gain here.

It's also critical that there is a line drawn for shitposting, so people know what it is and isn't, and your mods can't just hand-wave away the issue with lies about the content of the post they deleted, like they have done now countless times.

I could link to better examples if the modlog was public, but the best example I can think of (notably missing from your list) is my response to "Lainchan and other imageboards are compromised" (>>51903)

That post hit on the nose the similarities between the OP complaint and the situation developing here. It's a stark warning that you WILL end up with the same cesspool if you are not careful. The Internet is shit nowadays because it's tough work to advocate for your users and maintain a healthy hatred of them at the same time. The moderation here mimics the psychological whack-a-mole you see anywhere else where the tallest grass gets cut first, and considering your positioning of this site as a better alternative to those platforms, I find it a far better use of time to kill a traitor before an enemy.

Also, you didn't mention CP from your review of the private modlog. Either you don't label such content and fully delete it outright, or this "rave" mod is being dishonest about the problems you face in an attempt to lock down your site and kill its growth. If it's the latter, in your position I would see that as a bright shining red flag and remove rave from the mod team. You should staff your site with people that want to grow it and care for it, not kill its growth. If you really want a private forum that idea should come from YOU. Anyone else who tries that shit should be taken out back and given the Old Yeller.

I want you to know how awesome a public modlog could be. You list the post number (and thread number if applicable), the action taken (delete, warn, ban), the reason for the action, and the post content UNLESS the post was deleted for commercial spam or illegal content. Showing ban periods would be nice too.

Benefits of doing it this way include:

1. You make it difficult, but not impossible, to view offending posts in their original context, to prevent the modlog being a basedboard.
2. You show newcomers how content is handled before they make their first post
3. You show everyone who faces action what the basis for the action is AND that the action taken against them is not special or the result of glowfuckery or vendetta, but blends in with other deleted posts.
4. If there IS fuckery afoot, you make it easier for users to seek recourse. No one is screenshotting their posts and that content is the only proof of whether a rule was actually broken. When a poster can see their content was absolutely discriminated against and it's no accident, they will feel enabled to do the right thing and let you know about it. A HUGE benefit to your site.
5. If a user is accidentally posting below your desired quality, you prevent them from assuming some error occurred and just continuing to shitpost. Some people really do want to contribute in a meaningful way but will not gaslight themselves over some invisible action.

There are your specifics. I hope you use them well.

More thoughts continuing >>52306

I never planned to join IRC or XMPP in this current state. I would rather wait until your site either dies or grows enough to make warning users en masse both useful and entertaining. I am truly concerned about the direction here, but only in the context of this colorful rectangle I can open and close at any time. I may join the other services one day; not to presume but I think my intuition was correct that you are a different person than "rave" (who has posted with admin cap) and you have the good intentions necessary to code a website like this but are letting yourself be informed by bad actors and retards. If you were a bad actor yourself you would show these glownoobs how to really scorch the earth, not get your feet wet and ask a bunch of questions about the situation publicly.

This thread is still at the top of the board so if you delete this post for triple posting you suck cocks.

I forgot a detail:

>You make it difficult, but not impossible, to view offending posts in their original context, to prevent the modlog being a basedboard.
One way you can really accomplish this is by placing the content behind a "View Post" button or a link that makes the post appear on hover (no JS required), meaning you can only view one offending post at a time. Also now your table row heights are all the same which makes a very clean look.

You've made several compelling arguments. Especially about transparency preventing future moderator abuse.

I'm going to implement a public modlog as an experiment. Here's the initial approach:

Post/thread IDs, actions taken, reasons, day-of-week timestamps
Moderator pseudonym responsible

1 - No post content for obvious spam or illegal content
or
2 - Similar spam entries are consolidated into one mega-entry to prevent entire log page from being spam entries? Illegal content gets redacted?
I'll figure this one out.

Log will be batch-updated periodically rather than real-time

This should address this problem while preventing some of the issues I'm concerned about.
In regards to 'rave', I do appreciate the warning, but right now, I'm confident in the moderation team's alignment with site goals. If I am wrong, then the public modlog will make those patterns visible if that confidence is misplaced.
>Either you don't label such content and fully delete it outright
Most likely what happened. There are two kinds of deletions: soft and hard deletions. Posts SHOULD be soft-deleted unless they're illegal but I realize that there also isn't really anything stopping moderators from hard-deleting other things. This is a fault on my part. The ban management page also has a delete checkbox that actually hard-deletes instead of soft-deletes, so posts and threads that may have been deleted alongside a ban don't show up in the logs, either.

I am going to take time this weekend to work on the site. Best case scenario, it's done within a few days or less.

>>52316
>Please write a better post.
There goes my post, wow. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Anyway, thanks. You can solve #2 by adding a spam tag to actions/entries or compromise and group by date,content in sql or php.

>Log will be batch-updated periodically rather than real-time
Sus as fuck but ok. you can just edit it manually to group the entries then janny

Also, moderators can delete something so even you can't see it?

Password protecting the whole website looks great in theory. However, it doesn't fix the issue with content quality. Nor will it make the community more thriving. Pushing the forum users to IRC/Mumble/XMPP/(Discord ☠), will only harm the activity of this place.

You'll have to implement a captcha system, similar to what http://leftychan.i2p/ | http://kacdyre2mccory3jccpzu36ybzr6tpteuic6a7uhhya4dleek4xeuiid.onion/ does, in order to filter out the low quality posts. Also http://lambdaplusjs35padjaiz4jw2fugdoeutse262phqr72uf634s2wdbqd.onion/All/catalog.

If you plan on creating a thriving community, do consider creating an i2p (or onion) domain. Some configuration overhead, but it will clearly set this forum apart. What's more, i2p goes hand in hand with this forum's principles.

http://leftychans5gstl4zee2ecopkv6qvzsrbikwxnejpylwcho2yvh4owad.onion/ is actually the onion of leftychan, which forked from http://kacdyre2mccory3jccpzu36ybzr6tpteuic6a7uhhya4dleek4xeuiid.onion/

A nice example of how three protocols are bridged properly.