Count me in the column against this being a pay only site...face it, people can be trollish and have axes to grind whether or not they are paid members, and unless the mods and tx were able to track back who the troll/trolls were, it seemed they had axes to grind against Pol and Joemama, and the board.
The economy sucks right now and making this community, and it's knowledge restrictive really doesn't feel right to me...Even with what happened today...It could have easily BEEN a paying member who did this for all we know.
Honestly I wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to renew my membership when it lapsed...then all of a sudden someone anonymously decided to gift me with a lifetime...I still don't know who it was.
Making this a pay site from the get go, or even a "free trial" in this day and age just seems uncool....Plus I have a feeling that that would have the opposite affect on TX's pocketbook...most people spend time on here and then realize that they've got more than whatever the membership rate's worth of knowledge and feel the urge to give back to TX by joining...
There was talk in the past about not being able to create multiple aliases from the same computer address, or email address...THAT would make the trollishness more difficult.
Personally I think the 6 month timeframe before posting pictures is too excessive as well...I have been on forums were certain priveleges like that were allowed based on post count, but not with an added time frame...
I don't think it's fair that some noob who thinks his carboy is infected should be limited in being able to show the very people who can best help him a pic of it. I mean, a lot of people join and their very first post is about a problem with their beer, and we ask them to post a pic if it.....Maybe make it show a new poster has to wai 24 hours before being able to post pics if you have to have a time frame. That will at least keep some pissed off hothead from creating a fake account just to troll...
The biggest thing about today was that when it was happening I couldn't find a mod. I event went down to the main page where the "whos's online." BBut I couldn't spot a name in the mass of names, let alone if they were on or not.
I modded a froum, and was a member of another where there was a separate line at the bottom of the "who's online" box that listed the mod's who were online, that way you could click on one of their names to pm them...
Oh another thing tx, does there really have to be a 1 minute time restriction on reporting posts? I kept hitting that wall when I was trying to report all the trolls threads...he was creating them faster than the i minute block was allow me to report...
Anyway,