Is it possible to send messages to users on here? I can’t find a way…
Click the profile image, there’s a Message button in the popup. I wonder if it doesn’t show up for lower trust levels
Indeed, now the button appears to me. Thanks.
Private messages are gated behind trust levels. As you spend some time, you automatically gained more privileges.
See Understanding Discourse Trust Levels for more information. You might also be interested in the built-in tutorial (see @discobot’s initial private message and click on the bookmark).
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
Whoops. Well, that finally tells me that I can summon discobot really easy. Sorry 'bout that.
O frabjous day, where my reputation is a clean slate everywhere I go online. (Thankfully, David gave me a reputation implant, so I don’t have to prove myself to @discobot.)
Ah, sorry for the possible confusion: any interaction (reading, posting, reacting) will, after a short time, yield you a basic-member trust level. No tutorial required for that 
, you just need to:
- Entering at least 5 topics
- Reading at least 30 posts
- Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
However, there is also a maximum-post-limit for 24h, but I already saw in IRC that you’re aware of that and got it fixed 
.
I still recommend the tutorial, as I find it a great interactive way to teach the software at hand, something I might do for my own software in the future.
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I spent enough time programming forums back in the day. I feel like I shouldn’t need a tutorial to operate one as a user, but nowadays, who can say…
I would question whether we need these automatic limits on this forum. If a spammer joins, we should be able to wipe out all of their stuff with one click anyway, right? Why penalize new users artificially? Most people who come here have already passed the good-taste test. @daviwil ?
I recommend leaving the limits as-is. Out of the total 101 users, only 3 reported to be rate-limited at all (you, SqrtMinusOne, and I).
Given that there is only David as a moderator, I would not increase the potential amount of content-filtering at this point.
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I’d suggest appointing a handful of moderators, anyway. A forum with a bus-factor of 1 is going to eventually need attention when The Moderator is AFK.
Ouch! Is there a medical plugin for Discourse forums?
bus factor is above 1 now
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Are you talking about all such limits or just the maximum posts per 24h? Personally I’m in favor of keeping them all on, because even if we’re talking just about spam I’d rather have the moderators have time and headspace to look at actual interpersonal conflicts and rule violations rather than the toil of having to eliminate obvious spammers. But I think I have stronger feelings about the other limits.
I think he’s talking about the trust level settings where you have to interact with the forum some certain amount before you are given more permission.
I think it’s great when you have brand new people coming in, it seems to add friction for existing communities that already talk a lot and will immediately be rate limited.
Yeah, I can understand that it creates some friction at first, I’m wondering if it’s a problem perhaps? For one if you know the person from your community it seems you can grant them whatever they need to remove that friction. For another that friction is a one-time thing, and it really doesn’t seem hard to get through. But then again I didn’t hit it, so maybe it’s a much bigger problem for others.
The main thing that I think the one about sending private messages is for would be, I’m guessing, a harassment prevention system? Since neither banning accounts or emails, nor IP blocking are difficult to get around it seems that if you can create an account and immediately start sending private messages it would be difficult to prevent someone from making new accounts continually and harassing someone even when they get told not to.
Now this might not be a problem here and there might be better moderation options than limiting new accounts, but that is another reason that I can think of that I feel it’s a good idea to keep these restrictions in place. Or at least the private messaging one.
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What kind of place are we talking about here? This is System Crafters. I didn’t think this was supposed to be a place full of moderators and interpersonal conflicts and rule violations. This isn’t The Rest of the Internet.
It isn’t, but as the community grows we at least have to make sure it doesn’t become like the rest of the Internet. Don’t worry, @alphapapa, this isn’t going to become a Serious Rules Zone, but taking some minor precautions doesn’t hurt.
Anybody who is already known to the community can immediately be given a pass if they run into any trouble with the default trust level configuration. I plan to make that easier as time goes on.
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