new memebers

[nkafkafi]

> "whizbang" wrote:
> <snip>
>  Leave the established board as
> it is.  But open a new board visible to all members, but only allow
> quality posters to contribute.  Some forums do maintain invisible
> boards, like Hogsmeade at Cosforums.com.  Everyone knows Hogsmeade 
is
> there, but the staff chooses who may see and post on this board.  
It's
> an incentive to work on quality posting.

Neri:
I tend to agree with this suggestion, given that the "high quality" 
board is visible to all the rest, but who decides which are the "high 
quality" members who are allowed to post in the quality board? This 
looks like a source of much grievance. If the criteria are 
permissive, the new board won't be much better than the usual board. 
If the criteria are restrictive, there might be many offended 
members. Moreover, any solution that puts a lot of pressure on ADMIN 
is not likely to happen.

I'd add that even if I'm found worthy of the high quality group, I'd 
still want to post many times in the regular group, when I want to 
ask some question or make some comment that are not of much 
importance.

This leads me to suggest: maybe simply leave it to the members to 
decide what they want to post in the high-quality group and what they 
want to post in the regular group? Posting guidelines in the high 
quality group will be much more stringent (no one-line comments, use 
correct language, snip properly, read the whole thread before you 
respond, start a thread only if you say something original and well-
supported by canon, etc). ADMIN will be observing these guidelines 
especially with newbie posts, but I wouldn't decide from the outset 
that a newbie cannot make a contribution to the high quality group. 

You can then regulate the high-quality group at a rate that a 
reasonable person can cope with, say about 10 posts per day on 
average. If the rate is increased to 20 posts per day, ADMIN simply 
ask the members to be more stringent in what they post in the high-
quality group.

Neri