New user block on forum

hiccup has told me via the MusicBee forum that he can’t post anymore because it’s his first day on this forum.

That seems like a really unhelpful restriction for a new user who is just trying to ask questions in order to make correct edits. Is there anyone who can unblock him?

I don’t see a setting for this in https://community.metabrainz.org/admin/site_settings so not sure if this is something that is toggleable at all. @hiccup, what is the exact error you’re getting?

This is what he sent me: “Trying to post some more in the MusicBrainz forum, and I am not allowed anymore for the next 16 hours. (because ‘it is my first day’)”

That’s not a very useful error message for me to act on. Can he not post at all? Can he not make replies? Is he able to reply to the private message sent from me? Can he make a screenshot of the error?

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There shouldn’t be any such restriction. Very new users are only limited in how many links they can post and how many images they can include (because those features are particularly useful to spammers). However, even these limitiations no longer apply in this case because @hiccup already made it to trust level 1.

Edit: OK … so there actually are further restrictions for the first 24 hours. It seems there is no way to lift them for individual users; it is only possible to increase the global max_replies_in_first_day setting (defaults to 10 or so). I’m not sure we should do that.

The last two comments here are off-topic. Deleting them would give him one slot back, I believe.

Why not? I would think shutting down an account that’s misbehaving once in a while would be better than another setting that potentially alienates new users. hiccup and I are both mods on the MusicBee forum, so we know what it’s like to deal with spam. This seems like an awfully heavy-handed approach.

I’m back
That was a first though, a human banned by a bot…
Shouldn’t that be the other way around?

It’s probably not needed anymore, but this was the message.
It occurred when I wanted to reply, and a similar message appeared when I wanted to start a new topic.

I have the feeling that discourse is sometimes over the top in fighting spam but it seems rather ok to just wait another day.
I mean it is not as dumb as on those stackoverflow family sites where you have to earn karma god knows how before being able to post that answer you have and want to give out. I still cannot after years, I really do not understand those. :confused:

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At the very least, new users should be notified of this restriction up front, rather than being surprised by it when they hit the limit.

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One legitimate user hitting the limit (that I’ve heard of) makes me think it’s not that big an issue.
The fact that we can’t somehow manually ‘ok’ that user is a total nuisance though… but I guess Discourse isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure how much we want to focus dev efforts on it?

But anyway, welcome @hiccup, and sorry about the hassle :slight_smile:

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Thanks aerozol
No problem, better to be welcomed by humans and banned by bots than the other way around.
(I think? :thinking: )

But being the delicate, sensitive and vulnerable man that I am, it did surprise me, and it hurt my feelings a little bit. :grin:
That one, and also quickly being ‘reprimanded’ by the system that a reply should contain at least 20 characters (so I cannot just say “yes” or “thank you” ? ) got me a bit wondering about the ‘human factor’ here.

But the wondering is over. Great forum!

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No, and I think that is a good thing. In most cases, saying a bit more than “yes” will make your post much more useful. Even in the rare case where a bare “yes” really is everything you can say, you can quote what exactly you are affirming.

And instead of saying “thank you”, just give a like.

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One legitimate user who knew someone in another context and was able to continue to communicate that way. There may be others we haven’t heard about.

Automatic limitations are put in place by discourse to reduce the need for moderator work. Fighting spammers is completely not interesting job to do and there are tons of spammers.
The limiting system, through which we all have went in the few first days of activity here, is IMO not that much of a hindrance. But I am sure it prevents lots of hindrances like reading spam here and like lots of time consuming and un-motivating endless moderation.

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If there were others, they would have complained after the 24 hours were over.

Or they would have gone away and not come back. But you’re right, probably someone would have commented.

My main concern is that new users be alerted to this restriction from the start. I think people would understand if there was a note somewhere saying “in order to prevent spam…”

This would needlessly unsettle those 99% who aren’t going to hit the limit anyway.

I guess you could argue for a warning shortly before reaching the limit (say, after 8 posts); but still, the case is so rare that it isn’t worth the effort, IMO.

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