Fanfiction.net redux (spam controls/new users)

[estirose]

I was just surfing around and ended up reading about fanfiction.net. Now, as far as I knew, you couldn't load documents/post for four days. Apparently, you can't upload any documents for two days (48 hours exactly), and you can't post anything for two hours after setting up an account.


Now, the site has had captcha ever since Fanlib did a tool to lift one's stories off of ffn and put them on Fanlib. I get it occasionally when I'm trying to log in via my cellphone, because said cellphone doesn't do javascript easily. (I don't often log in, though, because I can't log in without javascript, and my cellphone gives me error messages and site functions don't work on it.)

To me, it seems a bit bizarre to let people post stories two hours after they register, but have to wait two days to be able to use document manager (which basically means you can't post anything). The only thing I can think of is to prevent spamming of users via DocX, the document thing used for sending stories to beta readers. But if that's so, why can you start posting a story? It admittedly doesn't let you get very far without anything in Document Manager, but why not let someone post stories up for document manager only, not DocX, for the two days? That way, they'll be ready to post when the two day/48 hour limit is reached.

I've always been confused by the four-day (now two-day) wait to post. Maybe I'm too much of an instant gratification person. (Of course, said limit really doesn't affect me, as I've been registered for seven years on the site; my user number is only five digits.) I'm sure that some wait works, to save readers from spam, but it doesn't stop people from posting sucky fanfics. It just makes them wait x amount of hours to post sucky fanfics. I guess that the two-day wait might save us from some of the new writers posting the stuff they wrote the previous night on a sugar high, but it's not going to save us from accounts that have passed the waiting period from posting said fics.

I guess what I'm trying to say (on a 'feature' that I don't even have to worry about, as I've been a member of the site for so long), is some wait is good. Some wait keeps spam out of our categories and our inboxes. But while I'm glad they cut down the wait, I'm not sure why they keep the wait still for so long.

Thoughts?

Comments

[cmar-wingnut.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity, where are you finding these rules stated? I remember the waiting period before posting a story, but can't find these rules listed.

[estirose.livejournal.com]

I think it was some message board somewhere; I can't remember where because I ran across it quite fleetingly. It's not something I think about a lot, of course, because I've been a member of the site for so long. :(

(I found it, I rambled, and of course I can't find the site now. Bleh.)

[cmar-wingnut.livejournal.com]

LOL for not finding stuff. I do it all the time.

If memory serves me (which is questionable) when Dagmar and I co-wrote a story a couple of years ago I opened a joint ff.net account, was able to upload, but had to wait 2 days to post. So I'm not sure the document upload wait is true, unless they've changed the policy since then. (And I'm way too lazy to open a new account just to find out.)

Protecting DocX from spamming seems to make no sense, since you have to have someone in your contacts to receive anything from them.

I can see the posting wait as preventing exactly what you referred to: Sugar High -> LOLZ fanfic -> POST RITE NOWZ!!!11 Only works for people who don't already have accounts, though.

[estirose.livejournal.com]

The only reasons I can think of for the delay are stopping people from signing up and posting stories on a sugar high, and preventing spambots from posting ads-as-fics. (Though you'd have to upload a document and start a story for that to work.) Unless the account prevents one from posting comments for a few days, I'd find it more likely a bot would commentspam. For that matter, you don't need an account to spam; it's merely much harder to deleted comments from spammed accounts.

On both ends, I'm not sure why a two-day delay exists compared to a delay of several hours. Or why the document manager is the major delay.

I'm not even sure why I'm complaining about this, when it doesn't even effect me.