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Suggestion: Invite-Only DN again

almost 4 years ago from , Product Designer

Spam is out of control. Tons of burner accounts. Voting rings are rampant. Mods are overwhelmed. The community is in the toilet.

DN used to be invite-only. Why not try going back to that?

20 comments

  • Catalin CimpanuCatalin Cimpanu, almost 4 years ago

    I'll be down with this if the decision ever comes to me... albeit I got on the site after they removed the invitation requirement :)))

    But the content quality at the time is what made me visit it every day

    5 points
    • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, almost 4 years ago

      Maybe we need a place for mods to chat, so we can sort out some strict rules around moderation? I’m all for being more active in policing these things, but we need to all be on the same page.

      2 points
      • Daniel GoldenDaniel Golden, almost 4 years ago

        Dude, you're not in the Slack workspace for mods? Not sure how that happened. If you shoot me your email address, I'll invite you. If you don't want to leave it here in the open feel free to DM me.

        0 points
      • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, almost 4 years ago

        stop me if i'm wrong here, but it seems like the mods are all volunteer and have little guidance and coordination.

        is there anyone at metalab (or whatever their spinoff company was called.. tiny?) involved at this point?

        0 points
        • Daniel GoldenDaniel Golden, almost 4 years ago

          You're not entirely wrong. We are almost all volunteer. All of us except for Matt Hollingsworth who I believe works for Tiny, the company that owns TN (correct me if I'm wrong, Matt)

          Anyway, we have the guidance of the community guidelines at the bottom of the site and some coordination in the Slack workspace, but it's not enough. More importantly, imo, we're fighting a losing battle (we need better mod tools and more support from Tiny considering the massive amounts of spam and voting rings we're seeing). I think we each still do this because we love/loved this site and don't want to see it completely die.

          But this site needs more love from Tiny. Fixes for bugs, new features, better search, better existing link checking, and shifting back to invitation only would be great.

          If you really want great ideas for how to improve the site, ask Catalin C.

          1 point
          • Michael KellyMichael Kelly, almost 4 years ago

            More love from Tiny is an understatement. We need our money-grubbing overlords to take interest in the design community.

            3 points
    • Mac Peterson, over 3 years ago

      Quality content is paramount... I have to filter through the noise as well, but there are still some great sources from time to time.

      A simple "Curated section" by mods at the top would ease that search for me big time... A bit like the newsletter but inside DN instead.

      0 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, almost 4 years ago

    I'd go for a grace/trial period on submitting after signup. How many spammers are gonna return/stick around to post their crappy blog post weeks later

    2 points
    • Reece ButlerReece Butler, almost 4 years ago

      Its a nice idea, but when I've been reporting spam accounts, a lot of them have been setup sometimes 6 months before hand. You'd think they would forget and move on, but some clearly are pretty organized.

      1 point
    • Orlene Picard, almost 4 years ago

      There's something called account nurturing. It's done here, on reddit, even in small local forums. It's not a %100 solution but it would slow down the spam. At least people would be more inclined to contribute before spamming. But, again, vote rings solve that as well. Need x amount of karma to post? Easy. Invite only would make it harder to join but won't address spam accounts that are already inside.

      0 points
  • Fulgenzia Delucci, almost 4 years ago

    I'd second that motion in a heartbeat!

    1 point
  • S B, almost 4 years ago

    The discussion here is already so dead that just seems like a great way to kill it even more.

    1 point
    • Cory DymondCory Dymond, almost 4 years ago

      Then it should probably die. The content is garbage at this point. DN used to be my new tab so I'd see it constantly. Now, I only check it if I'm really dying of boredom and want to catch up on... idk, some shitty Medium article about some pointless design related thing that is actually just written to promote some stupid e-book some dumbass wrote to make money off of.

      2 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, almost 4 years ago

    'out of control' seems more like waves. Hard to classify accounts as 'burner'

    What have you upvoted or submitted lately? that's all it takes

    1 point
    • Kemie GuaidaKemie Guaida, almost 4 years ago

      Every day when I wake up (European time) there are at least 2 spam threads, and then I mean the outright obvious "Hire web developers in Bangalore" spam. Apart from that there's usually 3-5 self-promotion not quite relevant ones. I report the blatant ones every day, next day there's more. So upvoting and submitting is not enough. We do have a spam problem

      3 points
  • Ken Em, almost 4 years ago

    They said they were going to consider this ages ago, but then nothing. No one in charge cares about the site or making it better. It's dead, Jim.

    1 point
    • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, almost 4 years ago

      it's dead, but we keep coming back.

      4 points
    • Mike Wilson, almost 4 years ago

      To be fair, community isn’t something you can really force into existence. If you look at the reddit attempts that have failed—it’s clearly difficult to get a group of people together who aren’t total noobs or in it for self promotion.

      Maybe designers aren’t clamoring to contribute to a community anymore because we’ve all moved on. Anytime I look at design twitter all I see is virtue signaling and sketch vs. Figma debates. To be honest, I don’t think I’d come here any more if those people were active here.

      0 points