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Discussions Cohost Cohost Feature Requests

Re-instate a new account waiting period, similar to the old activation queue.

We need to lurk more.

 

I personally believe one of the biggest contributing factors to the good feelings this site had in it's early days, that largely continues to this day when things aren't rocky, is that the website used to have a waiting period before they could start making comments or posts.


I don't feel like a manual activation queue should necessarily come back, but I do feel like it would be could if an account was given a fuzzy time period of up to a week to get situated and lurk. It would time for people to find familiar faces, set up profiles, get to understand the features of the site and figure out how it's used, what's expected of them, and generally get familiar with the impossible to define or mandate norms of a community.


A growing community will always have some friction, but I feel like there's a very real chance this could avoid a good deal of the least consequential friction and allow newcomers with a genuine concern to have time to really assess the prevalence of their concerns and how they should go about voicing their concerns if they feel it should be addressed publicly.

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additionally, I feel like a lot of people weren't quite aware of what they are allowed to do pre-activation and assumed they could only look around. Perhaps messaging emphasizing what they can still do while waiting to be activated could encourage active lurking and acclimation. 

If a web site made me wait an entire week just to be able to use their site, I'd abandon it entirely. Not out of spite, but due to it not becoming a part of my usual internet routine. Even being able to reblog other people's posts wouldn't help. I'm not adding a reminder to my calender app just to post when there are other places I can do that.

Maybe less than a week waiting period, or limit on amount of reblogs? But honestly that's just weird at this point. Lurking is a good idea but nobody specifically does that anymore aside from old farts who still remember that being part of rules / guidelines on old forums. Myself included.

This isn't the worst idea but the waiting period shouldn't be more than 24 hours imho. And it should be heavily communicated how it works. You don't want users to forget they've signed up. 

This is a double edged sword and would absolutely negatively impact that site's capability to bring in new users, which will ultimately affect the site's survivability. Social media rewards a short attention span and that is shown in the general population.

I already have one friend who instantly forgot about the site because they had to wait even a day, and I don't know a lot of people.
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