Option 1: Close the borders. It’s unfortunate that the best sort might be kept out, while its guaranteed the rest will be kept out. The best can found / join other sites, and LW can establish immigration policies after a while.
Option 2. Builds. Freeze LW at a stage of development, then have a new build later. Call this one LW 2012, and nobody can join for six months, and we’re intent on topics X Y and Z. Then for build 2013 there are some vacancies (based on karma?) for a period of time, and we’re intent on topics X Q and R.
Option 3: Expiration date. No matter how good or bad it gets, on date N it closes shop. Then it is forked into the This-ists and the Those-ians with a few Whatever-ites that all say they carry the torch and everybody else is more wrong.
In my experience, which admittedly comes from sites quite different from LW, an Internet project running on volunteer contributions that’s decided to keep new members from productive roles has a useful lifetime of no more than one to two years. That’s about how long it takes for everybody to voice their pet issues, settle their feuds, and move on with their lives; people may linger for years afterwards, but at that point the vital phase is over. This can be stretched somewhat if there’s deep factional divisions within the founding population—spite is a pretty good motivator—but only at the cost of making the user experience a lot more political.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that demand for membership in a forum like this one is continuous and fairly short-term. Accounts offer few easily quantifiable benefits to begin with, very few if the site’s readable to non-members, so we can’t rely on lasting ambitions to participate; people sign up because they view this forum as an attractive place to contribute, but the Internet offers no shortage of equivalent niches.
Option 1: Close the borders. It’s unfortunate that the best sort might be kept out, while its guaranteed the rest will be kept out. The best can found / join other sites, and LW can establish immigration policies after a while.
This isn’t so ridiculous in short bursts. I know that Hacker News disables registration if/when they get large media attention to avoid a swathe of new only-mildly-interested users. A similar thing could happen here. (It might be enough to have an admin switch that just puts a display: hidden into the CSS for the “register” button; trivial inconveniences and all.)
LW can establish immigration policies after a while.
Since this started out with people complaining about others already here, we might be called upon to create an immigration police. You sir, show me your +500 karma badge!
Option 1: Close the borders. It’s unfortunate that the best sort might be kept out, while its guaranteed the rest will be kept out. The best can found / join other sites, and LW can establish immigration policies after a while.
Option 2. Builds. Freeze LW at a stage of development, then have a new build later. Call this one LW 2012, and nobody can join for six months, and we’re intent on topics X Y and Z. Then for build 2013 there are some vacancies (based on karma?) for a period of time, and we’re intent on topics X Q and R.
Option 3: Expiration date. No matter how good or bad it gets, on date N it closes shop. Then it is forked into the This-ists and the Those-ians with a few Whatever-ites that all say they carry the torch and everybody else is more wrong.
In my experience, which admittedly comes from sites quite different from LW, an Internet project running on volunteer contributions that’s decided to keep new members from productive roles has a useful lifetime of no more than one to two years. That’s about how long it takes for everybody to voice their pet issues, settle their feuds, and move on with their lives; people may linger for years afterwards, but at that point the vital phase is over. This can be stretched somewhat if there’s deep factional divisions within the founding population—spite is a pretty good motivator—but only at the cost of making the user experience a lot more political.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that demand for membership in a forum like this one is continuous and fairly short-term. Accounts offer few easily quantifiable benefits to begin with, very few if the site’s readable to non-members, so we can’t rely on lasting ambitions to participate; people sign up because they view this forum as an attractive place to contribute, but the Internet offers no shortage of equivalent niches.
Added for completeness (I’m not sure immigration restrictions are a good idea): Have an invitation system.
This isn’t so ridiculous in short bursts. I know that Hacker News disables registration if/when they get large media attention to avoid a swathe of new only-mildly-interested users. A similar thing could happen here. (It might be enough to have an admin switch that just puts a
display: hidden
into the CSS for the “register” button; trivial inconveniences and all.)Since this started out with people complaining about others already here, we might be called upon to create an immigration police. You sir, show me your +500 karma badge!