Honeypot time?
 

How about a public honeypot area to attract the newbies? Those who demonstrate sufficient clue could be invited into the inner sanctum.

(For those who aren't familiar with the term, a "honeypot" (cf. Winnie The Pooh) is a computer system with a glaringly obvious security hole, intentionally set up for the purpose of attracting attention from hackers and/or automated trojan or virus attacks.)

Ah...my idea of "honeypot" is nowhere near that. :)

Yeah, well, network geeks came up with that usage... I've heard some of those boys are socially deprived ;)

:blinks:

You mean this isn't a sanitation referen...

oh. nevermind.

When you say honeypot do you mean preventing newbies from posting in forums other than the honeypot? Would they be allowed to view the discussions by current members in other forums?

This might be a neat idea to prevent people who could otherwise be classified as spammers from entering the forum. The only drawback would be about who regulates if your accepted or not? I joined this forum after viewing the threads for a few months and seeing how much higher the maturity level and intelligence factor is hear than on all the other forums I have participated. People who regularly paticipate in Cellar disscusions, for the most part, actually have useful and and intelligent things to say. If I had to engage in some sort of "approval" forum beforehand to gain acceptance by the "upper" members I probably would have just left thinking of this place as some sort of elitist social club for those with too much free time on their hands. But being allowed to participate just because I can has changed that view greatly.

I definitely see the point of a so called honeypot to prevent messed up people from destroying and otherwise intelligent conversation (i.e. r9/cuddles/april/whoever the hell this person really is). Seeing posts like those remind of the unmoderated MSN forums, something that the Cellar is clearly not. But how do you suggest this honeypot would work? As a newbie myself I'm asking.

I do know that there are some forums where you have to accumulate a certain number of posts to reach an "inner circle" of sort. The problem with that is that there's an inner circle, and when you aren't in it you can't feel a part of the community, even in the areas where you can post.

How do the outies know there are innies?
What happens when the innies do all their posting inside and the outies can't see what their missing?
Will the innies get bored with predictable posts from people they know well?
Either this idea is fraught with pitfalls or more likely, I don't get it. Besides the more you let in the better chance I have of finding my next Ex.:D

I think the best thing to do is to stay the course.

For all the members we get, most of them seem to never post or post infrequently. Some of them turn out to be decent. The rest are retarded...and that's a very small amount. How often do we have to give a newbie a beat down anyway (other than the usual initiation procedure)?

After you reach a certain level, you get to play with Bean and Pearl.:)

and yet, there does definately seem to BE an "inner circle"
A natural progression, I think. Poeple tend to "click". I registered almost immediately when I came upon this site. I came in via an IOTD -the jar opening octopus. And it has not been a long time, but i have spent far too much time wading through the cellar, and I see quite clearly that there is a core group of friends who take this thing very seriously. Real friendships develop here. If you begin to delineate this by using a honeypot ----or a gauntlet (sycamore, you devil) --- you do take the risk of bouncing newish members out the door. Seems like this thing has been chugging along rather nicely for quite a while and it ain't broke, so blah blah blah....

Anyway, there is a self cleansing mechanism or component of the cellar: it's users. As I've stated on other threads, it's actually an imortant role that the fluffers like april fullfil. Would Gilligan's Island have been funny if Gilligan stopped fucking up all the time?

My hat is off to UnderToad because of this:

A similar idea was discussed a couple years ago, and we decided against it.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=900

Oh yeah, it was an idle suggestion. I don't think I was serious about it.

It's cool...I think about things like that myself, b/c we do wind up getting some hum dingers in here. But then I remember that:

--We're a community and we have to deal with assholes here and there.
--Creating things that limit community access would make us seem like a bunch of snobs, which we don't want...even if we are. ;)

The problem with keeping out assholes is that two of them are the most prolific posters on the board.

You can't keep the dave and sycamore out. We're like a tidal wave against your little grass hut on the shore. We're getting in.

And then we're playing PS2.

Honeypot time
 

I was really pisssed when I first read" Stevedallas "post to set up a honeypot or inner sanctum for those in the know.Why is it that when something is good,fun sometimes serious,sometimes sad but on the whole very enjoyable does some Bugger want to change it.
I dont post much but read the Cellar every day and i would be very unchuffed if the main players retreated to some inner Nirvana where they debate ,argue and you have to go through some test to prove your worth and join in.Complete pisser of an Idea.
When I first found this board I read for a few weeks before I found the balls to register now I'm hooked please don't change.
If you really have to form or join a secret society try the Freemasons I hear they're good for a laugh.