Not really since we track actual reading time as well. That can’t be circumvented.
One thing I worry about, with “wait 10 minutes, or wait 1 day, or wait until trust level 1 (really the same thing, just more diverse) before you can post anything” is this:
↑ that is kind of a big deal. OK, fine, it doesn’t happen on every topic but when it does, it is magical, as in this is why we have a discussion community in the first place magical. So preventing that kind of synchronicity from ever possibly happening… is really severe.
I kind of agree there are two classes of topics. The controversial ones and “everything else”. I believe @beschizza will agree with me on this.
So maybe we need some way of algorithmically identifying those controversial topics so whatever change we propose (as it is, inevitably, increase in discussion strictness) applies only to those controversial topics where it is most needed, and doesn’t hinder discussion everywhere else?
How do you detect a hot button, controversial topic?
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Total # of comments, e.g. once it gets over 50, this setting kicks in? Simple, which is good. KISS, man.
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Total # of new commenters, e.g. once there are more than (n) new commenters, this setting kicks in?
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I don’t really want to get into tracking velocity over time, but I guess you could do that, more than (n) comments per hour or day or whatever, and this setting kicks in. That’d prevent false positives from the topic that just barely edges into 51 posts on day 4 or whatever.
That’s the first thing to decide. How do we semi-reliably, algorithmically tell a topic is controversial?
Discourse has this now, but the approval is moderators only, and would imply a not-insignificant increase in work for @falcor et al. The more experimental thing would be for the community (say, people at trust level 3 and 2) to approve posts by new posters before others see them. It’s been discussed a little but this would be … quite experimental, not necessarily risky in my opinion, but I worry about adding work to anyone’s plate.
Ok so, if you scoped to
- just the controversial topics
- just new users posting in said controversial topics
Maybe…
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Could it be more easily expressed as “new user posts must get at least 1 like from a not-new user to be visible”? This would certainly cover the Brianna Wu and Blake Reynolds dropping by cases.
We might be able to leverage the “hidden by the community” code path here so the posts would appear to the author, but only appear to the rest of the community if you clicked them to expand – until they get liked by a trusted user at least once.
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Maybe a basic read check is simpler. “You must have read (n) percent of the topic with a reasonable minimum wall clock time to be able to post in that topic as a new user”. This is the Bananas experiment, basically. If you want to post, fine, but read the god damn discussion first.
The scoping to new users and controversial topics part is important here. But if we do that, maybe something like the above two options, something simple and understandable, could help?
