There are two ways that servers on here can accept new members:
-Sign-ups where you join instantly
-Sign-ups where the server moderator has to manually approve your membership
Approval sign-ups make moderation much more effective, but some people seem to find them more difficult.
If you are someone who finds approval sign-ups more difficult, could you explain the main thing putting you off?
(By the way, this isn't meant to be judgmental, just want to find out what the main barriers are! 🙂
)
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
I don't like feeling like it's a gated community.
It gives me gross.
I completely understand kicking out spambots and bad actors, but I want to be able to look around and explore right away. Not wait and see if I get approved without any idea of how long it might take.
On the internet, even a day is too long and I'll go find something else.
There have been a number of platforms in the past where you couldn't join without an invite. No thanks. Exclusive clubs are not my jam.
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social Does this happen often? I've never yet run into a mastodon instance that I couldn't explore.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social
Thanks for the feedback 🙏
This is why I'm asking, as most of the time the moderated signups are not meant to be about exclusivity or gated communities or similar. But they have no way to customise the question to make this clear 😔
Would it help if the question was customised to make clear that they aren't trying to be exclusive, that they're just wanting to put off spammers etc?
And if they gave a rough idea of how quickly approvals happened?
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
From the luddite normie perspective.
I feel like people are more discouraged by extra hoops than spammers.
Sure, spammers will take the path of least resistance, but why profile everyone when the bad actors are going to show you who they are anyway?
I feel like it's behavior that needs to be monitored. Not access.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
Being up front about community standards and what would give someone the boot would make a big difference. Then I could make an educated decision about whether that works for me.
But I'll be honest, just waiting to see if I'm approved by someone else already feels culturally loaded in an awkward way. Reminds me of lots of ways I've had a bad time.
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social
It should be showing you the rules on the website, for example here are the rules on my server: https://social.growyourown.services/about
You don't need to be a member to see the rules on other servers 🙂
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social
The reason there's such a controversy and discussion about instant signups is beacuse the spammers and trolls aren't just causing problems on their own server.
For example a few days ago there were trolls signing up with extremely racist usernames. They couldn't do this on servers that have moderated signups because the mods would see it, but they were able to do this on servers with instant signups.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
All that said, I have absolutely no problem doing some version of the "I am not a robot" routine.
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social
So, if they could make clear that this is all they wanted, it would help? 🙂
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
I get why that is a real issue.
It still feels like punishing the whole class because that one kid is an epic dick.
Fedi.Tips
Manda