This may be unpopular, but I am getting tired of all the questions to enter a space or create an account, not just in the lemmygrad-sphere, but basically every leftist space on the internet.
I wanted to create an account on ProleWiki, but to do so I need to pass an exam.
FIRST SET (please answer all 8 questions)
SECOND SET (choose 5 questions to answer)
I have already answered pretty much the same questions to get on lemmygrad and matrix. If I knew I’d be asked the same things over and over, I would have saved them from the first (or second) time I typed them all out. Mind you, lemmygrad isn’t the first place I visited/joined, so I have answered a similar set of questions probably 6-7 times in the past few years.
The biggest problem with the questions is that they don’t work. As in, they’re not going to filter out any bad actors, because people intent on joining for destructive purposes aren’t going to be deterred by a few questions they can answer with a quick google search. Bad actors will also know what answers you expect to see and write those. It’s a bit like when the US border control gives you the green form with the question “Are you a terrorist?” But the questions will turn away people like me who are simply tired of writing an exam just to create an account on a webpage.
I have always had problems with tests/exams as in I have a problem they exist and I literally have traumas from them lmao. The pressure, the uncertainty, the doubt… I mean there’s a reason people still have anxiety dreams about missing a test or not studying long after they have left school.
By all means, have questions in the signup forms, but:
Fewer questions
Two to three questions max. You don’t need theory questions, they can be googled. You don’t need LGBTQ questions, that should just be a statement “Here we respect LGBTQ people and their right to exist, use pronouns people ask, don’t discriminate, etc. violation of this rule will result in a ban, possibly permanent.” Done.
Right kinds of questions
If you want a theory/reading question ask something like: What was the book/article/work that got you into Marxism/communism and why? or What’s the most recent work of communist literature (book, article, novel, pamphlet, zine, etc.) that had an impact on you and why?
People will tell you more about themselves by actually talking about themselves rather than answering questions about theory. Not to mention it’s harder to fake being a communist when you have to give your own personal understanding of something that’s not a big issue. Asking about Palestine, DEI, culture war topics doesn’t make sense because again they can look up what you want to hear. But if someone says the most recent work they read is the Capital or Manifesto and they think everyone should be equal then that should raise a red flag (not for being wrong, but for not being genuine).
No wrong kinds of questions
There are some questions you simply shouldn’t ask as a matter of principle.
For example, you have this is number 3 of the mandatory questions for ProleWiki: “3. Have you read our principles? Comment your agreements or objections to their points.”
Since a person filling this out is only requesting an account, asking for comments on the principles may come across as you simply rejecting anyone who doesn’t agree or will want changes. This shouldn’t be a question, but a statement: “These are our principles, joining means you agree to them.” I don’t know how ProleWiki is run if there are meetings where principles are modified/added/removed or if they are set in stone. If set in stone, then it definitely makes no sense to ask.
Questions that are questions, not several questions hidden as one
Asking things is easy, but whoever wrote the questions has no respect for people’s time. This is just way too much work, people have things to do. The time spent answering questions could be spent writing an article for the wiki. There’s an idea! Instead of answering all those questions, just have a list of topics people can write a wiki article on. That wiki article is the entry form. Simple, elegant, dare I say… beautiful?
What’s there now though:
Where did you find ProleWiki from?(1) How familiar are you with it?(2) Comment what made you want to join ProleWiki(3) and what areas you are interested in contributing to.(4)
That is 4 questions.
What current of Marxist thought do you uphold? Describe as thoroughly as needed your path towards your current political perspective.
That is 2 questions, one of them an “essay question”.
Have you read our principles? Comment your agreements or objections to their points.
There are ten subheadings in the principles, with more sub-subheadings. That’s a question and an essay question. Q: 6 E: 2
What is your understanding of gender? Should Marxists support the LGBT community?
2 questions.
What is your position on Joseph Stalin(1) and Mao Zedong?(2) How would you describe their historical role?(3,4) Share any comments or critiques you have regarding them.(5)
5 questions.
What are your thoughts on China,(1) Vietnam,(2) Cuba,(3) DPRK(4) and Laos?(5) Do you believe any of these countries is socialist?(6) Why or why not?(7)
7 questions.
What is settler-colonialism,(1) are there any countries that still fit that description(2) and what should be done regarding them?(3) Further, what is to be done about the decolonization and liberation of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and immigrant groups in your country?(4)
4 questions.
What is your analysis of the situation in Palestine?(1) What do you think of the 2023 October 7 events(2) and the groups involved from both sides of the conflict?(3)
3 questions.
I count 23 regular questions and 2 essay questions. And that’s only the “8” mandatory questions.
TL;DR too many questions to get an account (like ProleWiki, lemmygrad, matrix, but other leftist spaces too). ask fewer (2-3) but more poignant questions. rules about LGBTQ and other rules that aren’t up for discussion shouldn’t be a question but a statement to be accepted or not. answering so many questions is mentally taxing/exhausting.
I want to say, I would have agreed with you that the questions do not stop bad actors, and that they are simple to get past, but I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of bad actors who cannot get through them and are stopped at the first hurdle. If we where finding that the questions were/are no longer serving that role we would change or remove them.
I can also tell you that we regularly have discussions on if we need to change or remove the questions, and if the questions are too burdensome for entry. I can say most of the questions are there because we have either had a fairly large issue with it in the past, or it has been a particularly good filtering tool
It was surprising the first time I realized trolls were very blatant about their intentions. Except for a certain thermonuclear one, but he’s an exception. I don’t know why they don’t put in effort, they probably get dopamine from just submitting troll answers and that’s all they need.
It is insane to me, and it always seems to happen right as I am doubting the effectiveness of the questions too, like they do not seem that hard to fake
In regards to Lemmygrad we keep it very simple. I think the questions are the same ones you had to answer back when you made your account, with the addition of a copy-paste job meant to prevent AI (and it works great). There’s essentially 4 questions and you can keep it to one-two lines per answer because we have other systems on top of this one. On a forum like this trolls usually come out pretty quickly and get found out eventually because they keep posting. If they never post then they’re not really a troll and cause no bother.
In my experience trolls and other bad actors actually don’t bother trying to infiltrate the questions, they answer earnestly. Most of the rejections on lemmygrad are bots and people who wouldn’t fit in here, so we direct them to an instance that would be better for them.
I can also shed light on the ProleWiki vetting since I’m involved in fashioning it. We start from the premise that if you are going to be writing long articles on an encyclopedia, then you would be more likely to answer a longer vetting form. Experience tells us that our premise is not entirely wrong for two reasons:
- We ask for feedback on the process at the end of the form and people tell us that they actually enjoy the questions, it forces them to think about things they might not have known about before. There’s a possibility that this is biased, i.e. the people that enjoy the process are the ones that go to the end of it in the first place, but -
- We used to exist without a vetting process, you just had to tell us a bit about yourself freeform, and we didn’t get that many more account requests than we do currently. I think our average number of account requests has been pretty consistent since 2021.
This leads us to believe the barrier to entry is somewhere else and that the vetting form doesn’t factor in all that much.
The questions are designed to tell us a lot about the prospective editor, there’s a need to prevent bots which is a huge problem on Mediawiki, but we also need to make sure new editors are knowledgeable in all topics, i.e. that they are marxists. We want to be sure our editors won’t publish wrong or controversial information based on vibes. Once you get an account you can edit any page, so it’s totally possible that your area of expertise is in economics and you don’t know a lot about philosophy for example, but it works on the honor system and you promise to yourself you won’t edit philosophy pages. If we didn’t ask questions about philosophy we would never know that.
I agree with having people talk about themselves, but I don’t think one necessarily needs open-ended questions for that. What I find with that type of question is that people usually keep it short instead, which ends up providing very little information about them. When evaluating an account request on ProleWiki we normally only have their answers to go with and nothing else. If something is not made explicit in the answers, then we won’t know about that thing, so we need to encourage answers to be exhaustive.
The goal of this exhaustive process is not to gatekeep people but to make sure they have the knowledge required to become autonomous editors basically.
You were also wondering about the Principles. We have edited the principles to reflect editor commentary, e.g. wording or when we see the same point of confusion arise across different account requests. It allows us to see how people interpret our principles and we can also talk to them about that. There’s major disagreements that lead to a request being denied, and then there’s minor disagreements that arise from a reading misunderstanding (we can correct that by talking to the editor afterwards), or that as long as you agree not to reflect that disagreement in your edits is fine to live along with. If the question was simply “repeat that you agree to our principles and will not break them” we would be losing that self-crit component and might also be losing out on some requests because they feel a major disagreement that is actually only minor after we’re able to talk with them about it.
It’s a lengthy process but by our estimations it takes around 45 minutes on average to go through. This is a lot of time for some people and very little for others, but we are mindful of how long the process takes (along with how people discover it and how we can improve all of that package). The website doesn’t save it I think, which is something I’d like it to do, and I also think there’s too much text before the questions proper, but you should be able to copy the questions to Word, answer them at your pace there, and paste back into the PW form when you’re done. That way you don’t have to answer them all in one sitting.
edit: I wanted to add this but forgot. I like the idea of giving people one page to edit to see how they write etc. This is doable through the newish anon edits feature we rolled out some time back. But we might run into the same problem that this only tells us one facet of the prospective editor. But it’s something I can definitely see us explore eventually.
I think the questions are the same ones you had to answer back when you made your account
That’s my point. Why should I (or anyone else for that matter) have to answer them again? Maybe there should be a way for people with lemmygrad accounts to skip the questions?
We start from the premise that if you are going to be writing long articles on an encyclopedia, then you would be more likely to answer a longer vetting form. The questions are designed to tell us a lot about the prospective editor, i.e. that they are marxists.
Then the application form should be to write a wiki article for something that doesn’t have one yet, you could have a list of them and people just pick one. It’d be taking down two brids with one stone, you’d see how well they write + how they write, it’s easy to tell whether someone has a marxist outlook or not.
It’s a lengthy process but by our estimations it takes around 45 minutes on average to go through. you should be able to copy the questions to Word, answer them at your pace there, and paste back into the PW form when you’re done. That way you don’t have to answer them all in one sitting.
Yeah, that’s how I normally do it.
anon edits feature
I didn’t know about that. I guess the changes have to be approved first?
Yeah, anons can edit main wiki pages and the edits go into a moderation queue where trusted editors can approve or reject. It’s quite new, I think from some time this summer?
Then the application form should be to write a wiki article for something that doesn’t have one yet […]
Certainly, but like I explained in my previous comment once editors get access they can write about anything they want and we kinda have to trust that they know what they’re talking about, or spend time and effort patrolling all their edits and discussing if it’s factual or not and if we should remove or not. We need to know as much as we can about them which involves all sorts of topics.
Why should I (or anyone else for that matter) have to answer them again?
I meant specifically the Lemmygrad questions, sorry for the confusion. The Lemmygrad vetting questions haven’t changed since we first started account vetting actually, except for the anti-AI question that’s a copy and paste task. ProleWiki is completely independent from Lemmygrad as a project and while we can use someone’s Lemmygrad profile (or other profiles) to help expedite their account request if they tell us the info, they still have to answer the questions at this time. It’s not that easy to change the PW vetting or any other system we have there as decisions are made collectively with the editorship, so almost everything takes a while to discuss and implement.
Yeah, anons can edit main wiki pages and the edits go into a moderation queue
I wanted an account so I could edit/expand an existing page in particular, I’ll do that first.
or spend time and effort patrolling all their edits and discussing if it’s factual or not and if we should remove or not
Yes, that is true. In that way it makes sense.
Note that anon edits log your IP address, unfortunately we can’t change that so I recommend a VPN or similar if you want. All claims also need to be sourced except for stuff that we can reasonably expect people won’t bother checking (such as dates of birth, nationality or full names).
I started out tentatively agreeing with OP because i myself have never liked having to answer questions in that way. It feels too much like a job interview where even if you are qualified but are bad at answering their questions you may not be picked while someone who just knows what kind of answers are expected and has learned how to fake it will get the job. But the replies given here by the mods have been very well reasoned and convincing. I think i am now on the side of at least continuing to employ these questions on Prolewiki where it is to be expected that people should be comfortable with writing and be at least somewhat competent at it.
For Lemmygrad, i don’t know, of course i would like it to continue to be free of trolls, bots and bad faith actors, but at the same time we shouldn’t make it too intimidating to join for people who are new to Marxism and don’t really have a great understanding yet. We want to welcome people in so they can learn. I think the most important thing is that they don’t come in with already solidified preconceptions. If they come with an open mind and are willing to learn then it’s ok for someone new to all this to answer “i don’t know” or “i’m not sure” when asked theory questions. On the other hand if they already come with the assumption “tankie = bad” and expect to preach their liberal nonsense then they can fuck off.
I rise in support of the vetting.
It works. It works so well there are sore anarchists and left-libs on hex bear who will let people know they were rejected from here.
Sure it won’t stop a CIA officer who’s familiar with Marxism and determined to get an account (though even they will probably have to take their time). But it stops fascists who aren’t going to spend hours researching Marxism to give convincing sounding and organic arguments and it stops liberals who likewise aren’t going to put in the effort.
I do think perhaps the admins could offer an abbreviated vetting for those with an account here to get on prole wiki and perhaps vice versa.
I do think perhaps the admins could offer an abbreviated vetting for those with an account here to get on prole wiki and perhaps vice versa.
Something like this would be nice.
I don’t know about in other places, but when I joined here, I remember the questions giving me an opportunity to reflect on some things and put them more in concrete language. I’m not sure if it’s the same amount of questions now as it was then, but I don’t remember feeling deterred by it.
I could see it getting annoying if I was trying to join a lot of places in a short space of time that all did that, but for a one-time, rare thing, it didn’t really bother me.
I could see it getting annoying if I was trying to join a lot of places in a short space of time
I don’t know what a short space of time is, but my account is 9 months old, so… three times in 9 months. To me that’s a lot, especially cause my opinion on the things asked about hasn’t changed since the first or second time I answered. Maybe I should have messaged the admins privately and requested an account. You live and you learn.
I think having a lot of questions is good actually. Even for signing up for a bilibili account, you have to answer a lot of questions to demonstrate that you understand certain things about the site. Compared to the amount of time that you are going to spend on the site, it’s really not that much and it cuts down a lot on bad quality content. You can think of it as an alternative to the way that somethingawful makes you pay some money to join the site. It requires time instead of money, which is good because we’re trying to cultivate an international and working class culture here.
Even for signing up for a bilibili account, you have to answer a lot of questions to demonstrate that you understand certain things about the site.
True. It’s more about how it’s pretty much the same set of questions for lemmygrad, matrix and prolewiki, that they all have to be answered separately. It’s a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Not just for the users requesting accounts, but also for the people who have to read the same answers three times from the same person.
I’m not that involved in the formulating of the questions so I will leave that to the other admins to discuss but one thing I do want to address is the functionality of them.
You’d be surprised how many dumb ass applications get turned down before people are able to make an account and start shit on this site. Dozens of bad faith accounts have been filtered out this way and it’s mich easier to do then to remove comments, posts, etc that get potentially made afterwards.
But surely you don’t need all of those questions to weed out those dumb ass ones? Maybe the user can get random 2-3 questions from the pool of already existing ones.
I tend to agree. I’d love to hear a mod perspective – if these sorts of account filters seem to actually reduce the amount of bad actors we see – but I can also see a situation where the price of reducing that is too high in terms of legitimate users who decide it’s not worth the effort to make an account.
The best approach is probably:
- Low barriers to creating accounts
- A super quick trigger on maybe three-day temp bans, especially for new accounts
- Fairly casual usage of permanent bans
- A site culture where a ban is not some existential scandal and an excuse for a big slap fight, but rather a brush back pitch, where banned users are encouraged to learn from it and create new accounts
The last could be accomplished by adjusting whatever automated message accompanies bans, and by mods taking this line when they leave a comment after a ban/comment removal.
I am a mod on GZD and over on the GZD matrix. I can say on the lemmygrad community we tend to mostly rely on the Lemmygrad entry form so I cannot speak much from that, however on the Matrix, I can tell you that the questions stop an astonishing amount of bad actors from getting in, and it is not as if we assume that there is no cost for answering questions, that is a frequent topic of discussion, however it has become an invaluable tool in preventing bad actors from joining.
as for your points, I can speak to them from my personal experence
- I do not think anyone here is agueing for a “high barier to entry” what we are arguing is where that barrier threshold is, the danger with setting it too low ontop of spammers, is that it is easy to get people who are not even bad actors but not a fit for the comunity (think “nordic model socialists”) from entering and changing the dinamic sudenly, especialy when mods cannot be everywhere all the time, we have lives outside of this, and needs for sleep too
- bans are generaly distructive to culture building, aswell as what is seen as “over moderation” it is generaly better and more of a learning experence if things can be tought by individuals to each other. if we go around banning new accounts frequently what you get is 2 things an unwelcoming attitude, or atleast preseption of such, and you will start to get people scared to post anything untill after they hit said threshold, and that leads to … does the new account timer count up while banned, does it count if they only lurk? what if they are a frequent poster but with an unmemorable username? all of these exist when modding normaly but become a bigger deal when it becomes explicit policy that there is a fast trigger on new people
- First look above, and second a perma ban is a full severing of ties with a comunity and a person and should not be handled lightly, sure you may have appeal rules, where an individual may come back and apeal the ban later saying they have learned but it is still drastic. This is also how you start to get mass group think when mods and admins are willing to not just ban but perma ban for any infraction or going out of line
- that is advocating ban evasion, not only does ban evasion now remove any real power from the moderator, besides removing comments, but it is now explicitly allowing the people who had to be banned to re-enter, and with your very low barrier to entry, there is now no check or appeal, you have created a revolving door of bad actors and now every mod action is just a battle of attrition between the mod and the bad actor, ontop of the game of hide and seek
it is easy to get people who are not even bad actors but not a fit for the comunity (think “nordic model socialists”)
it is generaly better and more of a learning experence if things can be tought by individuals to each other
Frankly, I think we should be open to that sort of “left-ish” person with the aim of bringing them around to a more ML line. They’ve already taken some steps further left from most liberals, and places like this can speed their progress in the right direction if we let them in.
As for the ban strategy, it would take a concerted effort to change bans from “not to be handled lightly” to “take a break, learn from it, and start clean,” but I think it’d be a positive for the site culture overall. It’s a forum – steps that feel “drastic,” an appeals process, and the like are distractions and drama (and mod work), tailor-made to produce bitter disagreements. From other mod comments, it sounds like the truly bad actors out themselves fairly easily, and the good-faith users who get banned from a slap fight but learn from it are users we want back anyway.
Usually those users only get temporary bans anyway for the time out, but they are not trigger given, it is important that people are able to talk and work out there differences. Perma bans should be reserved only for people who are unable to contenue or have shown they are operating in bad faith, or where one of the few people who did not fit and sliped through anyway
I am also not saying nor will I ever say we should disallow people who are curious, I am refering to the people who in there application forms will say something like “I am a socialist, I like what norway does, but I hate tankies they are just as bad as the Nazis” Given we are a community of ML’s would someone who thinks ML’s are akin to nazis be a good fit, for the people inside or for them themselves? I would say no, that would result in a ban fairly quickly, and the ban would only add to an athoritarian world view of us. What would be better is to direct them to a place they can learn more, and when they have learned more let them in
check my answer itt
Good stuff, thanks for the comprehensive thoughts.
