
Saving forums from themselves with shared hierarchical whitelists (2009) - networked
http://www.cawtech.demon.co.uk/outer-circle/core.html
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zenincognito
The problem is that spammers will very likely create accounts (n) , use these
accounts to create hierarchial lists assigning account (A ) at the top of
hierarchy and use that to spam post or advertise.

SEO spam works very similiar to this.

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lonelappde
How would a spammer get to the top of each user's personal hierarchy?

This personal hierarchical, not pagerank.

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920110)

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lonelappde
2009 and aged like milk.

Top comment: "Maybe this is why Twitter works"

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dang
Fine old threads are interesting; lousy old threads show that things don't
always get worse. Win-win!

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alangibson
Has anyone experimented with forums that require verified identity? The forum
would have to add a hell of alot of value to get people to do it, but I'd
imagine it's the most airtight way to stop trolls and spammers.

It wouldn't scale particularly well, but most forums have a relatively small
group of posters adding all the value anyway.

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ObsoleteNerd
I’m on a forum that’s been around for a solid 15 years and doesn’t give you
posting rights unless you pay $5/year. The amount is trivial enough that even
the poorest members can manage it (or if they’re regulars and liked, others
gift them a subscription) yet it seems to be enough to stop spammers
bothering. There’s been a few trolls over the years who paid the $5 to bombard
the forum with stuff but there’s also posting limitations for new members and
other restrictions so it never goes very far.

I still love forums to this day and think they have a place in the modern web.
Reddit and Facebook will want you to think otherwise, but there’s hundreds of
niche hobbies that specifically DON’T want the network effect of a large
multi-topic forum like reddit and still do very well.

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lonelappde
Is that Something Awful, Fark, Metafilter, or something else?

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etblg
Something Awful isn't 5$ a year, it's 10$ for an account.

And the amount of people who buy 10$ to re-reg their banned account and get
banned for the exact same reason as before could not be classified as "a few".

I am interested in learning which forum does the 5$ a year, I wasn't aware of
many other forums with a pay-wall.

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commandlinefan
Sounds pretty much the way facebook works - you ensconce yourself in a bubble
of opinions you agree with. Not that there's anything wrong with that if
that's what you want, but don't try to fool yourself into thinking that the
discussions will suddenly improve in "quality" if you filter out the people
that irritate you.

