Add minimum requirements for access to the chat room

Question

Keeping the chat room under control has been a prominent issue in the community for a while now, and we are still in need of solutions. I want to start the discussion again with another potential feature that could reduce the amount of squabbles/arguments that happen on the chat room -- I'm sure you've read what that is!

The suggestion to add minimum requirements for access to the chat room started on Discord. I observed over time that a fair few problems on the chat room centre around people who signed up to the site recently and start using the chat room very quickly, without integrating with the community first e.g. using the Q&A. I suggested to experts+ that a points requirement could help with that, and it evolved into a discussion about making a requirement that accounts are at least 7 days old before they can use chat.

I/we believe adding this feature would improve the experience on the chat room in a number of ways:

• It is a strong mechanism against basic problems like scam/advert/SEO spam and alt account abuse. These things do occur and need to be intercepted by staff as things stand.
• It nudges new users toward the Q&A aspect of the community first. This means that any person who uses the chat room will at least be familiar with some regulars and the "properness" of the platform that we aim for. (In general, if the main aspect of our community is the Q&A, then that should probably be the focus for new users.)
• It means that any person using the chat will have a vested interest in our community that lasted for at least a week. I think this favours people who will participate in good faith and weeds out the people who are only here to cause trouble.
• Many of the people who cause problems on chat are clearly young kids, who get hooked on its interactivity. You would expect that having them sit through a week of the Q&A first (where all their posts are pre-moderated) would put a damper on their interest, and at worst, forewarn us of what could happen in a week's time.
• The 7-day approach means existing users who frequent the chat room won't be locked out if they aren't using the Q&A.

We want to know the wider community's thoughts on this feature, and obviously Pokemaster's opinions too. Do you think this would be a good addition to the chat room?

We would also like to gauge some opinions on points as a requirement for accessing the chat room. In our discussion, we decided that points alone would not be an ideal solution as they could lock regulars out of the chat room. However, they could work in conjuction with the 7-day requirement as an alternative method for accessing the chat room, i.e. "To use the chat room, your account must be 7 days old, or you must have >100 points." This would help keen new users access the chat room sooner. Would this be a better compromise?

Of course, we would also very much appreciate a response from Pokemaster indicating whether he would add this feature.

Thanks for reading!

Comments

I love this idea, considering the amount of trolls and dupes coming to the chat. I agree with J about the 1-3 days suggestion. I also disagree with the points requirement. I feel like there are people who will sign up for this website not because they want to answer questions, but because they want to interact with people (which kind of became my reason for staying here the last few months). So anyway those are my opinions.

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I believe I was the one who initially suggested the points idea on the staff server. I dont think points should be used at all if time isn't also used, the whole idea is that if you gain however many points before your account is old enough to access chat, you're granted access to chat anyway because somebody getting that many points is likely somebody who will contribute to the site and not be an annoyance.

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lol despite what I said on that old suggestion from PX I definitely do not agree with limiting chat usage even just by 2 points.  I also think it's insane to ask someone to wait after they've already signed up and confirmed their email.

But why exactly should this be necessary to begin with? In all my years using the chat room I've only seen a new account "advertise" once. I agree it would deter dupes, but permabanned users who bypass IP bans are probably willing to wait that long anyway. So... who is this restriction for and why? How is it helping against trolls?

By the way, Fizz, this should've been on the survey!

A lot of forums require you to introduce yourself before you're approved to post elsewhere. I wonder if our equivalent of that could just be filling out your profile.

Anyway, I don't think there's a problem with the chat room aside from lack of attentive mods/editors, and I don't see how this would fix that.

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People were interested in the idea due to the amount of brand new accounts that show up on the chat room and cause problems. (Alt accounts don't make up a big portion of that issue, but I may as well put it to you that you don't need to be banned to have an interest in trolling with alts.)
People like these have continued to come up since the suggestion was posted (based on what is reported to us in our Discord server/s). It is true that inattentive mods/editors is the root cause of that problem, but I'll be honest and say that I cannot stand the chat room (and haven't been able to for years). That won't change and I'm not going to force it on the others either.

You can tell me if I'm naive, but I think having to wait (or get points on the Q&A where we'll see what's happening) will make idiots who just created an account less interested in doing what they do. That will help with the problem that we are not active on the chat room by reducing the number of problems.
I understand how the collateral of this is that genuine people have to go to some trouble to access the chat room. But I also detailed in the OP how that can be spun as a good thing (i.e., people should come for the Q&A first and the chat room second). I don't at all expect everyone to agree with that though.
And yes, you are right that this should have been on the survey. I will put it on any survey we do in the future.

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That explanation was very helpful, thanks. I wasn't thinking about it in broad enough terms. With that in mind now I kind of do agree that some sort of wait should be necessary.