The benefits of restrictions in the collective blog

Do you manage a collective blog project? This article is for you!



Your well-known in (far from narrow) circles of the site have thousands of users. The word is almost offensive to a member of the community: we are not users, we are the authors of this blog. Actually, the word “user” can only be seen in the EULA, or maybe there is something like “Registered * date * at the invitation of the user * user *” in your account.
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The project audience - progressive-minded people interested in X - your blog is thematic. Maybe you do not plan to be limited to just a blog: thematic sites, TV and radio channels, magazines, newspapers - as this is all called together, I forgot. The project is equally interesting to X-toms and to journalists, as well as to all those for whom X is not just N letters of the alphabet.

So why do you impose restrictions?

You have different authors: someone writes really high-quality articles, behind which you can see a lot of experience and intelligence. Others are active in the comments, which is also important: many readers, having seen that the article is long, read the comments before the article in order to understand whether it is worth spending any effort on understanding the author’s statements. Still others, with their posts and comments, make readers want to punish the author and somehow limit his activity - to podzatknut his verbal fountain.

If you realize this desire through the ability to vote for the user, and limit the authors with a negative balance of votes, we get a self-regulating community. The drawbacks are conformism and “gestalt closure”.

Conformism
Users are afraid to openly express their opinions. In an anonymous vote, no one, of course, is not shy. But what exactly the author does not agree with, he will never know. And to go against the majority opinion in the comments, not everyone decides. Solution: strictly enter the possibility of anonymous commenting. This may be the privilege of users with a large positive balance of votes, or the opportunity for everyone once a week, or a free day on April 1, for example.

Gestalt closure
The ability to vote demotivates a person to comment. Maybe this is good: fewer meaningless comments.

How to restrict authors

Limit on commenting frequency
Inadequate users with a negative balance of votes may initiate an interesting discussion in the comments, but in the discussion itself, let adequate ones prevail.

Restriction on writing posts
Unlimited can only write those whom the community assesses positively. In order not to score a blog with uninteresting posts, users with a negative balance of votes can write posts only once every few days.

Limitation of the functional when commenting
Prohibiting unpopular users from posting large pictures, videos and links is understandable. On the other hand, the impossibility to issue a quote or make a spoiler is frustrating. This is not a preference, but a necessity for observing the rules of decency.

Should I reset the vote count?

The reason for this decision may be:

The desire to make rating articles more honest by depriving part of the community of the opportunity to vote. For example, to limit the "Chukchi non-writers"
Not very logical: if my balance of votes allows you to vote, what's the difference, for comments or posts I got these votes? Or to appreciate the dish, you have to be a cook?
But in general, such a measure does not cause negativity among non-targeted users, so this can be done.

Consideration that the majority of authors exclusively comments - twists
One can ignore the opinion of those who honestly scored their votes, but falls under this criterion - again, no one will be offended.