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by hayksaakian 3993 days ago
At least with reddit, there's community moderation (read free employees) which enforces the contents of each section.

is there any incentive to participate in your community?

With moderators you feed the "power tripper".

With karma you feed people obsessed with points.

This is a bit complicated: what if you had some sort of capcha that required users to classify images as nsfw/sfw/illegal?

3 comments

Reddit doesn't allow users to upload images. Just links. And they ban problematic domains.
Linking to certain NSFW domains in a comment will prohibit the comment from being posted by Reddit's internal logic.
This is a bit complicated: what if you had some sort of capcha that required users to classify images as nsfw/sfw/illegal?

If the user normally encounters photos on the site by requesting them (e.g., by entering a search query or browsing a friend's album) rather than having random photos thrown in their face (like HotOrNot.com), I would think you could run into some very upset users (and possibly legal problems) if you are throwing random photos that might contain disturbing images in their faces. I mean, if you go to a website intending to browse photos your friend took of his boat and the site throws up some random child porn on your screen, you'd be pretty annoyed, right?

no i mean something like this.

prompt a capcha when someone attempts to `upload` a file

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CA4S4lFWEAEJUUB.png:large

Forcing your users to look through a selection of random images which could include several which may be illegal for them to view is not okay at all. Especially if you know you're putting them at that risk!
I don't think nothing good can come from throwing random pictures that may very well contain child porn at random users.
This would indeed be a problem at the start. But after some time it could weed out. People wanting to share illegal images would go away from the site if they ger rejected. We could expect a significant drop in nasty images.
You would to expect a significant drop in traffic after the ensuing PR nightmares, fbi raids. Followed by years of lawsuits from people who claim PTSD symptoms and what not after being forced to watch CP.
I'm not sure why it never caught on with my users.

I do support Twitter login which is fairly common, and have had a few hundred users sign up (out of like >10mil uniques), but I wouldn't say that they've exhibited overly engaged behavior after doing so. They're basically the same from a stats perspective from what I've observed.

I'm afraid to make user logins compulsory, especially considering the kinds of knuckleheads that are on my site.

How do I get from "eh, have fun as a guest" to "everyone's got an id" without destroying my stats?

Why are stats so important? Do big numbers mean more than doing the morally and legally correct thing?

I also question the assumption that taking steps toward accountability and community will hurt the numbers. Maybe in the short term, but if your site becomes a cesspool it will eventually drive your real users away anyway. If you figure out how to sustainably handle the filth, it may be possible to attract a much larger audience who would otherwise have been repulsed. Yik Yak is an example of that strategy.