talkmagic.co.uk

Although I have not been a member long I have noticed an increase in the number of "How is this trick done?' and "Can someone tell me the secret?" posts recently. I noticed that Bronz mentions the Make Registration Harder Campaign 2006 in his sig.

When new members post questions requesting secrets they are generally met with a series of "read the rules" comments, along with various witty responses. Although the creativity of our members does make some of the responses fun to read, I think that most would prefer that the original posts were never made and that new members new, before posting anything, that such questions were unacceptable.

So, and I realize that Bronz and others may have already made these suggestions but I thought I would present them again for discussion, I would like to suggest the following:

New members are required to read and agree to certain rules before creating an account
That the rules include not only "Don't ask for secrets" and "Don't expose secrets" but some version of the Magician's Oath (for those truly new to magic)
That new members are required to answer questions about the rules before being allowed to create an account and post (I would think that the poll mechanism could be utilized for this, and if not then the answers would have to be reviewed by a moderator and the account manually activated in a day or so)
That new members agree that violation of the rules will result in their post (and possibly their account, maybe after a warning) being removed.

I have added a poll to see what people think.

On the one hand, it might put off a lot of people from joining. But then, there wont be any excuse for not knowing what the rules of the forum are. It's a shame that things will have to be made more difficult though for the sake of those who can't be bothered with the forum rules.

I think there should be a rule about asking for secrets that all members have to read and agree too. It would eliminate a lot of anoying first-posts.

I dont think that would solve anything because people could just say theyve read them when they havent! Although, if prompted to read them, it could give us a good reason to just delete the accounts of people who still insist on rule breaking.

i think the should because all the "how do you do this" threads are makeing me mad

Ricky has a good point about people clicking 'OK' to indicate they've read and understood things regardless of whether they have or not, or even if they plan to abide by them or not.

How many of us actually read through ALL the terms and conditions we had to agree to before getting the activation code to first join TM? C'mon, be honest ! (and before you ask, no I didn't have to as that feature was added well after I joined but I've read through them several times in order to deal with some of the problem members you're referring to!)

TM is supposed to be a fun place where we (supposedly) discuss magic and allied topics in order to widen and share our understanding and thoughts on the topic. We have to be careful we don’t get too restrictive and become a closed society, newcomers are the lifeblood of any forum or organisation and we just need to guide them until such time as they get the idea of how TM works. Most newcomers are bursting with questions about how things are done – that’s understandable and shows that they have enthusiasm (I exclude the just wanna know secrets people in this category!) but they need a bit of time to get into the swing of things – like most of us did when we first arrived. I freely confess that I was reprimanded once (only once!) for being too open with an explanation about a commercial item and but was done win a firm and humourous way which put me back on track pronto.

Of course there are plenty who arrive just to cause trouble and they get elbowed asap but please be tolerant of newcomers, give them the benefit of the doubt for a while and welcome them.

Mandrake wrote:Ricky has a good point about people clicking 'OK' to indicate they've read and understood things regardless of whether they have or not, or even if they plan to abide by them or not.

This was the reason I suggested that the new members are required to answer questions regarding the rules to prove that they have read them and understood them. This will also provide the basis for removing users and deleting their posts. If they read the rules and correctly answer the questions then they understand the rules and if they break them there is no excuse for doing so.