Rep for profile

I'm thinking of making there be a 200 rep requirement to have a homepage URL in your profile, and to fill the about me fields. I've been noticing a lot of users signing up just to spam URLS in profiles which sucks. We want to stop this if we can.

Example:

http://www.scirra.com/users/buildingcredit

Thoughts? Cool with everyone to introduce this low limit?

I don't think this is good, as it just means more spam posts will be made before these people can put up their spam. One post of links vs 50 posts + the spam post isn't cool.

For the WoW gold ones, playing WoW to get it is a job in China, so I'm sure they have advertising it as a job. Either that, or they will just write Scirra specific bots.

IMO, the posts are more hazardous than the profiles. You have to look to find their profile links.

Edit: Ah, after I a re-read I see that there is no change to whether the URL's can be posted in the topics still.

Ok, I agree with this change then. That at least stops people from making fake accounts to spam profiles and taking up user names.

For me the whole rep thing causes more problems than it's worth. It's just not needed at all.

I understand your reservations Ethan, but we are trying to make it compliment the site, not be a blockade for anything. One useful thing rep can do is create natural filters such as the one I propose that should help keep the site in a lot better condition without having mods/admins spend hours of time checking them and deleting them manually!

The best thing to do honestly, is just report the thread or post(s) in question and the moderation team can now deal with it.

It would be nice if our job was "easier" but it's not exactly hard anyway.

It also means I get to wave the ban hammer around, which doesn't happen very often since everyone here is generally so well behaved. ;)

~Sol

Reporting posts is now available in the upgrade, but this is more in regards to people abusing their profiles for spam purposes which is harder to control.

Reporting posts is now available in the upgrade, but this is more in regards to people abusing their profiles for spam purposes which is harder to control.

Oh I see, I thought you meant just the bots.

If users are doing this as well then, yeah... maybe a minimum rep requirement that can be over-ridden if a user proves themselves "trustworthy" prior to reaching the 200 rep requirement, since not all users will want to post 200 times just to advertise their project.

If the user can perhaps request early "release" or something, via PM or maybe a thread? Not sure how one would deal with that...

~Sol

When you register you are given 100 rep from the go, so 200 would mean ~50 forum posts, or 10 upvotes on a comment you leave, or 1 tutorial submission. It wouldn't take someone long to reach, although 150 might be better.

I think it's perfectly fair to require 200 rep to add a link.

It's not a big deal if you can't put your link there, and we get tonnes and tonnes of spambots. It's a big problem for the site, and the more spamlinks that make it on the site the more likely search engines are to downgrade the whole Scirra site as a "dodgy neighbourhood". This 200 rep thing will probably just remove the problem entirely, at minimal inconvenience for regular users.

(All forum links should be nofollow'd as well, perhaps until 200 rep)

With the previous forum software, this wasn't an issue because the search engine crawl bots didn't check profile pages because a person had to be logged in to view them - I'm assuming that isn't an option for web wiz?

I kind of liked when users could post links at their first post, because it made it real easy to tell who the spammers were and keep the forum clean. If they can't post links, and they post anyway, then there's no way to tell they're spammers and people end up pointlessly responding to them.

You could allow signatures, and not allow links to be clickable until a certain rep is earned, but fifty posts is a bit much, and will alienate new users.

You could allow signatures, and not allow links to be clickable until a certain rep is earned, but fifty posts is a bit much, and will alienate new users.

i disagree. 80% of my posts were gained in H&S section just for asking questions. it is recently when i turned more talketive. and hey - i got 200 posts.

sorry guys, but is that realy important? to have signatures? - clickable or not. I do understand that some wants to put links to their websites, but honestly, i don't think i ever clicked any of those links.

Rep points should serve as a trust meter. More you have, more stuff you can do on forum.

'm thinking of making there be a 200 rep requirement to have a homepage URL in your profile, and to fill the about me fields

Not sure about that, it's just a profile page. If you one to see someones url to his/hers homepage you have to go to hos/hers profile page - or maybe i'm missing something.

0% of my posts were gained in H&S section just for asking questions

I don't thinks it's even possible to separate questions and answers on forum. I personally have gain more of my rep by answering questions and discuss in subjects then by asking questions - i usually ask if i realy can't do something by myself or if i found a bug.

agree with you The_Funny_Guy, you could easly get 1000 point by asking obvious things like "where can i found sprite objects" or "why c2 does not save as exe" - but where's the point in that?

There should be an info for newcomers just after registration, with huge letter saying "If you have a question try search the forum first - then ask". It's realy anoing answering same questions all over again.

Thank you, you're wonderful, drive save ;P

<font size="2">..for the_funny_guy, this google translate as

"Dziekuje, jestes wspanialy, dysk zapisac" lol :P </font>

personally I find it very annoying that new(ish) user cant have clickable links, and other users have to copy and paste links to get to demos, capx files etc. I also think that this makes the forum look unprofessional. I do on the other hand understand the need to have a system to stop spammers.

There is a soulation that I have seen on many forums, and also used myself. This is to have a forum called "introduce yourselves" (I know we have a thread, but it should be a forum). When a new user signs up, all forum features, apart from reading are disabled, however the "introduce yourselves" forum is fully functional, in other words a new user must post in the "introduce yourself" before they can do anything else. this forum needs to be monitored. after the new users post has been approved by a moderator then unrestricted access to the rest of the forum is granted

zordork: It maybe works on smaller forums, but considering the number of new members that daily register to Scirra.com it's just an unmanageable solution.

Also having a "spam" area is not really constructive either.

We have a great community of helpful people, and so far people who really have something relevant to say do post when and where needed.

We'd like to keep it that way and so far it has proven to work.

Also please pay attention to the date of the threads you're posting in. Bringing back a topic from 2011 is not a smart move and frowned upon here.