Opening Pandora's Box

OK, I've got a question. We've got Pandora's Box to quarantine new members to ensure we're not releasing hopeless duals or spambots onto the board. It helps ensure that people who sign up can post instantly, albiet in a limited forum - that way, interest atrophies far slower than if they had to wait for a confirmation.

However, an issue has come up. Namely, that people are stuck in Pandora's Box just as long as they have been stuck waiting for confirmation. The folk we have in there right now are taking it pretty well, all things considered, and we have a nice slate of people welcoming them in (albiet with some tired jokes about duals and the like).

Frankly, if there are new recruits who are duals, leaving them in there can cause far more damage to the perceptions of the incoming than if they were in the general board population. Right now, if you read the threads, it would seem like nobody's being let out into the forums. Who would want to join up with that?

If it's simply an issue of time, we either need someone around to clear people out of there after they've proved they aren't around to sell us Viagra, or it needs to be automated. I would, frankly, support the latter. Make it a well-defined, well-communicated value of, say, five or ten posts - clears out all of the spammers and duals with weak constitutions, and then everyone else - all the good, legitimate folks (of which I believe we have a good deal) - can post after merely replying to a few "Hello!"s and jokes about being chainsaw murderers.

I agree.

They need to be let out of the box.

Good idea.

I nominate Kyle.

Huh-huh-huh-huh!!

Heh-heh-heh-heh, m, meh-heh-heh-heh!!

Another n00b seems to be stuck in the Box.

He was posting on the boards earlier but is now again restricted to the Box.

Just a heads up.

metafractal be his name.

I think it's a good idea.

Btw, I still haven't completely understood the spambot issue. If the Box is there to keep spambots out of WF proper, while allowing easy registration access to the Box, then why aren't there any active spambots in the Box?

Can we get the fuck rid of Embassy II already? It sucks more than the original did and that sucked quite a bit. We have new posters constantly stuck in there for days unable to post, with fucked up permissions. What good does this do? I've heard you're trying to fix the problem but if you really were you'd just get rid of the damn thing. Are spambots that big a problem? I've seen you get rid of spambots in minutes but you can't seem to get a new poster into the RR in less than seven days.

He does have a point, and not just the one under his hat.

"!"

I think having someone whose mod and/or admin abilities restricted solely to releasing folks in the PB could help remedy this. I'm no expert on running a board, but it's fairly easy to tell the difference with a legit poster and a spambot that's there to advertise porn. If we can't do that, get rid of it and do registration the old-fashioned way =/

JMO.

ETA: Or perhaps set it so that a poster needs a certain amount of posts before they can be let out of PB. Something like ten or fifteen, by which point, it should be easy to filter out who are and aren't duals/spambots and it saves the mods the hassle of releasing new people.

They're real good at closing joke threads in there.

Thing is, it's not the n00bs I've seen get their panties in a bunch over that stuff.

To be fair, not everyone shows up for the Red Room and the treatment it entails, so I can see why they'd want to keep it out of there.

However, still, I renew my question - why the hell does it take so long to get people into the active forums, and how is that any better than simply waiting for confirmation?

Please keep the hate in the Red/Gray Rooms. Next time, it's the dungeon for you mister!