
Impact of Removing Registration: 250,000 posts - 8ren
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?707
======
Groxx
> _And the quality of posts? The post kill-rate (removal) actually dropped
> -hovering below 2%. This is less than half of the number incurred when
> registration was in place._

edit: the above refers to an automatic spam-killing filter, and nothing else.
From what I saw, at least.

\-------

Some numbers:

Behind registration: ~4.5%, out of an estimated 125 posts/day * 31 days ≈ 174
spam posts over 31 days = 5.6 spams per day

No registration: An anemic estimate of 1% of spam killed, out of an anemic
estimate of 2,000 posts/day over the rest of the graph (2000 * (108-31) *
0.01) ≈ 1540 spam posts over 77 days = 20 spams per day

Removing registration lowers spam? Not really. Comparatively? Yes, because you
have more non-spammers, and registration is _not_ a barrier to entry for a
spammer. But it doesn't _reduce_ spam, and non-spam quantity is not equivalent
to quality.

I'd be interested in a _moderator_ -killed post number, weighted against the
users/moderators ratio. I'd bet it _skyrocketed_ \- anonymity is fertile
ground to flamebait.

~~~
freejoe76
Chris Tolles, the guy in charge of Topix, has said more than once that he's a
fan of loose / little moderation on his boards.

------
Hagelin
Why not link to the actual blog post?

Topix.net forums on fire: the Ni-chan paradox (2006)
<http://blog.topix.com/archives/000106.html>

~~~
Perceval
This experiment, if I recall correctly, was done by Shii. Shii was (at one
point) involved in 4chan, and along with moot and W.T. Snacks implemented the
period of forced anonymity on /b/.

He has his own website, where he talks about lowering the barriers to
participation: <http://shii.org/knows/Anonymous>

~~~
astrange
I don't remember a "the period of forced anonymous on /b/". It's happened
multiple times, although most people are already Anonymous so you wouldn't
notice.

Although I also don't see what it has to do with this. Removing names isn't
somehow more anonymous than just allowing no name. (And having a random name
is the same thing as no name. Slightly more interesting too.)

------
rwhitman
Ok, but from an economic perspective - if Topix is not collecting email
addresses, how can they monetize all these people in the long run? From a
marketing & user retention standpoint isn't that throwing away a pretty
valuable channel? What monetary gain does 780 random anonymous non-threaded
text-only comments bring?

(Just really curious, I've recently started trying to see things from this
perspective and I'm interested in hearing discussion from the business model
end)

~~~
astrange
What kind of value would having a forum user's email address give you? Unless
by "monetize" you just mean "send them activity notices so they'll come back",
it sounds like you want to spam them.

Personally, I recommend monetizing internet forums by selling people things
and having them buy them for money. You can keep interest by just being
interesting.

~~~
rwhitman
I don't think sending your users emails should be considered spam. Mailing
lists and email upsells can be very lucrative, even if you're not emailing
users immediately, an email address is a valuable thing to be leaving on the
table.

~~~
andre
what is does is increases the "skin" a user has invested into the site,
whereas before, they wouldn't even consider registering

------
aarongough
This is something that I have been thinking about for a while, and I have
implemented systems not requiring registration several times.

In order to try to keep the quality of the content relatively high on those
sites I also do some very simple statistical analysis on the text of each
post/comment. It works very well! I've had one of the sites up for over a year
and haven't had any real problems.

There is a Rails plugin that I wrote for implementing a comment system without
registration here: <http://github.com/aarongough/has_threaded_comments>

And that system integrates automatically with my system for doing statistical
analysis on the text: <http://github.com/aarongough/validates_text_content>

Examples of both in use can be seen at: <http://whyiamangry.com/>

~~~
astrange
Why do you have a pseudonym field for a one-off rant? If it's optional, why
doesn't it say so? It doesn't add anything and just annoys people as they stop
for a few seconds to type in "wtf" before continuing.

~~~
aarongough
Mainly so that people can establish an identity associated with their rants if
they choose, many people seem to do this.

Additionally it allows people to identify themselves as the OP when posting
comments, and allows people to be more expressive by giving themselves a name
to match their rant like 'AngryAtSuchAndSuch'.

The pseudonym is not optional.

------
dstein
The concept of sign-up forms are fine. The problem is every web developer
wants to write his own. Even if some rudimentary "simple sign-up" REST API
started to catch on, then browser plug-ins could be written handle all the in-
between steps in signing up, checking your email, and confirming identity.

------
prawn
I run a forum without registration (about 700-1000 posts/week). People can
register, make up an alias for each post, or just post anonymously. Many
people don't record an email address when they post and the majority are not
registered or logged in when they post.

The majority of spammers do leave a valid (free-account) email address and
register to spam (probably not used to a forum that doesn't require
registration).

~~~
vaksel
the spammers are most likely just using xrumer so it's a bot doing everything
for them

------
bugsy
As a data point, I've participated in Topix forums for many years and have
never seen a single spam post despite the lack of required registration. But I
have seen a lot of really dumb and contentious discussions.

~~~
andre
I think this happens everywhere. I have first hand knowledge of this problem
on news websites. (I'm talking about the "really dumb and contentious
discussion")

