Ask HN: Suggestions for cutting down new account spam
If the server doesn't automatically identify and kill these posts, then it must be a lot of tedious work for admins to manually kill these posts (and maybe the server does find them on its own. If that's the case, then this post may be irrelevant). I thought about it, and came up with a possible solution. What if new users weren't allowed to post until after they earned 10 karma points? This would bring the level of work required for the spammers to make submissions above the potential return, reducing the number of attempts, clearing up the new page (for showdead users like myself), and hopefully ease the workload of our wonderful admins.
My questions for you:
Is something like this already in place? (I imagine not, because there are some users who create anonymous accounts just for a specific Ask HN post, but I could be wrong.)
Are there any other suggestions from HN users to clear up the number of posts from spammers? Is this a practical solution? Would it discourage new members? Would spammers just find another way around it?
5 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 23.7 ms ] threadIf you make participation a requirement for posting, you might just displace spam into comments...
I now understand the motivation for keeping this under wraps as much as possible, please take that in to consideration while discussing this.
I came to HN because I sent Paul Graham something that he thought was interesting, and he suggested I post it. If karma-less members weren't able to post, I probably wouldn't be here. That's just me, but I'm almost certainly not the only one.
Getting the majority of the work done by the members en passant seems reasonable.