Flood Control

[SoftWareRevue]

What do you think is the maximum amount of time between posts a forum should place on new members?

For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that your forum is on the busy side, commercial in nature, and susceptible to drive by spammers.

Would a flood limit of 5 minutes or so for brand new members place undue restrictions on them? Is there a reason your second post on a forum would be before 5 minutes?

:crystal: Or we could all invest in crystal balls. :crystal:

[Scott]

Five minutes seems a bit much. Say I'm visiting a new forum for the first time and sign up. I've probably looked at a thread or two and might want to make a post in one. After registering I find there is an introductions forum so make a post in there. After waiting 5 minutes I've found another couple of threads to reply in, but have to wait many more minutes and I may decide not to bother.

If the forum is quite active, 5 minutes could be a long time to wait.

It's great for spam fighting but pretty inconvenient to real people.

How long would they stay at this time limit for?

[PinkFloyd]

5 minutes seems a bit too long. My opinion would be 1 1/2 minutes. I've registered on a few forums and banged out 5 posts in a few minutes, as I was quite interested in the topics.

[Dougy]

30-90 seconds.

[adb22791]

Would a flood limit of 5 minutes or so for brand new members place undue restrictions on them? Is there a reason your second post on a forum would be before 5 minutes?


Bumping an old thread for the sake of bumping. :hippy:

In short, yes. We can look at this from two ways: the admin side and the user side. When a user first joins our forum, we hope they read the rules, read some threads, and figure out how things are run. We hope they are looking to establish a "relationship" with our forum and understand everything about our forum to help keep things clean and running smoothly.
However, when a user first joins a forum, it is more likely than not they have a specific question or reason for joining, so they create their first thread with this question / reason. Now, maybe they notice another thread in the forum that they would like to reply to. They go to reply, and find a 5 minute counter stopping them. :S As admins, we would hope that they would take this time to read the rules, and read some more threads, but as the user, it is much more likely that they will just close the window and come back later to check on their thread.

I have done this at other forums, specifically those that are communities for gadgets like MP3 players. I didn't join the forum because I love my MP3 player (I don't :( ), I joined because I was having issues and needed some help. If they hadn't had long wait times (and this forum also had post requirements for certain forums), I probably would have stayed and at least made a few more posts, rather than following my issue via thread subscriptions. :angel:


Alex

[Chris]

I really think 5 minutes is too long. If the said forum is commercial in nature, their main goal is to attract legitimate users. When I join a new forum, I immediately start helping people as much as I can. I search for threads with issues that have gone unanswered, and do my best to help the user. I say 60 seconds for a large, commercial forum is the sweet spot.

[leo]

60 minutes is enough. IF you put more, people will get angry when they get the warning message and will leave forums forever.

[Scott]

Hope you mean 60 seconds lol, 60 minutes would drive a lot of people insane.

[leo]

lol :emlaugh: yeah, 60 seconds!

[Kwek]

I personally believe 30 seconds would be enough.

I tend to look for interesting topics to post in when I first join a forum; if the time limit is over 30 seconds, normally I'd feel frustrated. Having a longer time limit can help to reduce the spam from new members, but at the same time, it also turns off those members who sincerely want to be active.

Just my 2 cents.

Kwek

[cyberturk]

i am using 30 seconds on normal times but sometimes i chane it to the 2 minutes to protect the board.