New Members - Please Read

Every year around this time we get an influx of new members and every year the Which stage gets flooded with duplicate threads or trolling/hateful threads that end up becoming a bit of an issue. For the most part, people who have been here year round understand the posting and thread-creating guidelines like where a thread should go and to check if there's one that already exists. Newer members sometimes could use a little more time to get to know the place or look around at threads that already exist.

There's been discussion between mods and regular members lately about taking some steps towards dealing with this. One idea brought up was a "new member" sub-forum that people would be able to post/reply in until they move up to the main boards. As of now we're not implementing a new sub-forum but that may change in the future if we feel it's necessary. What we WILL be doing is instituting a few changes to new members as of today.


The Changes:


- First off - there will be a new "Welcome" PM to new members giving a brief rundown of rules and these new changes. Also providing links to many threads that we encourage people to make their initial posts in.

- New Members who sign up will be able to post/reply in any section of the board except for the Which Stage. They will be able to reply in the Which Stage section once they reach 1 post. For this initial first post we are encouraging new members to introduce themselves in the lurker introduction thread or reply in some of the general Bonnaroo/inforoo threads like "How many roos have you been to" or "Random Thoughts". They will also be able to reply to threads in the sections that were created as searching for a ride/carpool or asking camping questions.


So after your first post, you will be able to reply in the Which Stage section of the board, which holds the "Music of Bonnaroo" threads.


- Creating new threads in the Which Stage will take slightly longer for these new members. One of the things that inevitably always happens is someone will sign up on lineup day and create a bunch of trolling threads or complain about a specific act or something like that. Also, we tend to get people who join up and create new threads that have been around for months because they don't take a minute to look around. To deal with this we are having it so new members will not be able to create new threads in the Which section until they have a minimum of 40 posts.

They will be able to create threads in other sections, if they are looking for a ride or want to talk about a TV show or play a game or something. But creating a new thread in the Which Stage will be limited to the people with at least 40 posts.



Some guidelines:

- If you are a member who has been registered here for a while but do not have 40 posts yet and would like the ability to create threads in the Which stage just PM me and I'll give that ability (though we assume people who have been here that want to make threads likely have over 40 posts). Or even easier...get your post count up by replying all over the place.

- DO NOT scam the system: if we notice someone making a bunch of low-effort, one-word posts to get to 40 posts then we will reserve the right to delete those posts or reset your post count. This is being done to try and get more genuine interaction and also help people get a feel for the place before diving into the music discussion.

- If there are questions either post them here or PM a mod.



NOTICE FOR CURRENT/REGULAR MEMBERS: If you see someone blatantly trolling or making duplicate threads or posting in the wrong section PLEASE use the "Report Thread" function. It will help us out immensely and we expect there to be a bunch of duplicate or unnecessary threads this week.



We understand that some will like this and others will not. Some will think it's too much and some will think it's not enough. We're testing this out as a first step to see how it works. We aren't trying to exclude anyone but rather encourage them to check out the many other subforums of the board since there's a lot of great information, discussions, and relationships formed all over Inforoo. Arguing about headliners isn't all we're here for.


Thanks very much.