So, You're in a Fag Barn. Here's How You Get Out.
So basically, we've had a horrible experience with new registrations. People come in and just shit all over the place. It's very easy to be either too lenient and let people go too long, or be too aggressive, and ban anyone over minor infractions.
The plan that I've come up with is to have a totally separate forum for new users, which is the Newfag Barn.
This can more or less be a free-for-all, where people can suck as hard as they want, or try to post stuff that is good. If you post enough good stuff, and get enough support from existing members (mostly in the form of likes), you will be introduced into the general population.
Of course, because this is going to be a place for people to prove themselves and get support from old members, it can't be a total free-for-all, so it is possible to get banned (for spam or other obvious things), it's just that bad quality posting won't get you banned.
Right now, this is the only way to get onto the main forum. We might try to do some kind of invite system that allows existing members to vouch for their own personal friends and skip this process... but maybe everyone should just have to go through this process.
You can still read most of the rest of the forum and follow threads, it's just that you can only post here. If you feel an urge to respond to something on the main forum, you can post a thread here responding to it, and try to get the attention/likes of people from the main forum.
I am recommending that all established members check in on this forum regularly and give out likes to people they think would make good community members. So in theory, if you're posting good stuff, it should only take you a couple of days to get out of here.
Until then, at least you have a place to post where you don't have to worry as much about offending an established community, which is the standard problem with allowing new members onto forums.
People on the internet are naturally cliquish and hostile towards new people, and this causes new people to respond with hostility or with fear of rejection, so this concept here is meant to avoid all of that.
If this doesn't work, I will probably just close registration again. I do not have any desire to go back to the free-for-all days of 2020, given that after I purged the forum and closed registration, conversation quality increased by exactly six million.
You can start threads or reply to this thread or other threads. Whatever. Just produce good content, and you will get out of this barn.