Registered Visitor User Group Changes

[Marc]

Registered Visitor User Group Changes

I have disabled people with less than 20 posts from putting in Custom User Titles. This is, in part, to keep people from dropping by, putting in a couple posts, and then putting in a company name, web site or whatever.

Essentially, when people register the software puts them in the 'Registered Visitor' user group.



There is a 'Promotions' system in the vBulletin software which allows a person's user group to change based upon certain criteria. For years this has been the setting:


A change in the future will probably be to allow people who have a significant number (significant is yet to be defined) 'help' posts (where the person helps others with specific answers (pointing someone to the poster's web site is NOT a 'helping' post) to their questions.

If you want examples of people who might (this is being discussed, among other things, in the moderator's forum) fit this category, please see the posts Wayne and Bob have made. They help people here. I want a way to recognize those that help and this is one way I think we may be able to ease up a bit on the current TOS.

It is probable that I will be changing some other restrictions and use the current setting of 20 posts before someone can get 'Visitor' messages, have 'Blogs', make 'Social Groups', and have picture 'Albums. These changes will help reduce forum spam, I believe.

I entertain your thoughts and comments.

[Coury Ferguson]

I think this is a great idea and great change. Thanks Marc.

FWIW: Maybe making this poll anonymous might be a better idea.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Coury Ferguson

FWIW: Maybe making this poll anonymous might be a better idea.

I thought about that, but I sorta feel that if someone votes, especially on something like this, anonymity isn't a big deal. I'd sorta like to know how different people feel.

I do understand what you're saying, though. A public poll typically will not draw as many voters as an anonymous poll will.

Heck. It's just an opinion poll and if someone is afraid that others will use the vote in this simple poll against them for some reason, there's a deeper problem.

[Stijloor]

Marc,

Would a "trial run" be an idea? See what the changes will do?

In addition, let's think about ways to make The Cove Forums better known.
I am surprised that so many folks in the quality and related professions are not aware of this great resource.

Stijloor.

[Marc]

Since this is about user groups, I'll share with you all of the settings a user group has. Each of these is 'tailored' for the specific user group, but each user group has the same main options.

The below are the current 'Registered Visitor' user group settings as of 21July2008@~8pm:


If any of you have any suggestions for any settings, jump right in this thread and we can discuss.

Bear in mind, at 20 posts the user is 'auto-magically' moved to the "Involvement Access - Posts" user group which has different option settings. NOTE: This is done by a 'cron' which runs every hour at x:45 am/pm, so the user group change isn't immediate when someone posts their 20th post.

I haven't really gone through all the options in every user group in a while. As you can see, there are a LOT of options... I'm starting to go through them thoroughly this week.

As I said, if you have feedback, this is the time and the thread to do it in.

[Marc]

Your thoughts on knocking the 'Promotion' down to 10 posts instead of the current 20?

Would another 'Promotion' level be a good idea?

Here are the options (strategies):

[Marc]

Post 5 updated. 21July2008 at about 8pm.

To remind everyone: It is probable that I will be changing some other restrictions and use the current setting of 20 posts before someone can get 'Visitor' messages, have 'Blogs', make 'Social Groups', and have picture 'Albums. These changes will help reduce forum spam, I believe.

I continue to entertain your thoughts and comments.

[harry]

Your thoughts on knocking the 'Promotion' down to 10 posts instead of the current 20?

I think this is a good figure. By the tenth post, we'll have a pretty good idea about the 'user'.