Comments on: Announcement: new user signups are back on. 20 people a day.

Announcement: new user signups are back on. 20 people a day.

mathowie — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:00:55 -0800

New user signups are back on. 20 people a day are going to be allowed in, starting at noon each day. Only one signup per person, per day as well. Report any probs with it here.

By: gen

gen — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:02:45 -0800

Is that PST or EST or GMT? Just curious...

By: timeistight

timeistight — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:07:04 -0800

Cool Matt. Thanks very much.

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:07:55 -0800

is it going to be the first 20 people that request it after noon, or a random 20 throughout the day?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:08:35 -0800

Noon pacific, of course, it's MetaFilter time afterall.

By: machaus

machaus — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:10:43 -0800

it's MetaFilter time

*cracks open brewski*

You know what Matt, it just doesn't get any better than this.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:14:49 -0800

Well, I guess I could have waited, but I'm still happy to have bought my way in. Best ten bucks I've ever spent.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:17:59 -0800

Best ten bucks I've ever spent

These people (and many others who are not listed) think so too.

By: Voice of God

Voice of God — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:43:43 -0800

Thanks for opening it up, Matt. I've been waiting an eternity to get in.

By: silusGROK

silusGROK — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:45:58 -0800

Hazzah!

By: timeistight

timeistight — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:54:08 -0800

I'd like to be the first to welcome all of you. You have absolutely no idea how glad I am to see you here.

By: aine42

aine42 — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:02:45 -0800

Best ten bucks I've ever spent

Agreed. The amount of entertainment I've gotten out of this site in the last year or two definitely warranted a tip o' the wallet to Matt.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:03:37 -0800

I promise to use these powers only for good.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:13:30 -0800

Most excellent!

So is this what you were referring to in the following quote from the sidebar, or is there yet even more to come?

Now that those bugs are fixed, I'm putting the finishing touches on a new feature for MetaFilter I think everyone will enjoy. More soon.

By: Shadowkeeper

Shadowkeeper — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:14:38 -0800

I was going to post this.

Welcome new people! Now just head on over to Obscure Store and pick out a story for your first FPP!

But then I decided not to.

But if I had, I would have been serious about the "welcome" part.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:15:52 -0800

rushmc: don't be so happy; you already have a new enemy.

h

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:32:19 -0800

Matt, have you made any kind of guess as to how long you'll be able to keep signups open, based on current server load/current users or some other calculation, or are you just going to wait and see?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:00:27 -0800

I'll just wait and see.

Hopefully a few dozen people quit each day, to level things out. Or I could decrease the allowable signups to ten a day.

By: jazon

jazon — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:23:39 -0800

Hopefully a few dozen people quit each day

Does that mean we need to start targeting various people for a little "mefi" rouging up, to encourage the attrition?

8-)

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:42:15 -0800

Initiation time!

Bring out the sheep!

By: mediareport

mediareport — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:44:33 -0800

Be sure to rouge them up.

By: rodz

rodz — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:45:42 -0800

it's MetaFilter time

That's my problem. I'm running on MetaFilter time!

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 18:52:06 -0800

"Bring out the sheep!"

Bringing in the sheep, bringing in the sheep. We will come rejoicing, bringing in the sheep.

This is what I thought I was supposed to be singing in church until I was about thirteen years old. Can you blame a kid?

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:11:58 -0800

Be sure to rouge them up.

I'll be the victim, I'll be the victim!

Mainly since once I'm in drag, I'm hideous. All the better to further scare the newbier-than-me's out there :-)

By: Sapphireblue

Sapphireblue — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:22:52 -0800

welcome, y'all, glad to have you. hey, have you seen the exquisite new* 'get your war on' comic strips from mnftiu?

If MeFi Users Had Taglines... mathowie: busting his ass for MeFi since 1999

By: yhbc

yhbc — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:23:50 -0800

Ah, now I really do feel like I belong here. Be good now, honored and welcome newcomers; remember that those who snuck in ahead of you stuck their necks out awful far at times for you ;)

'sides, all us crusty vets will slap you silly if you get out of line. ;);) (that's a double-wink, in case anyone's wondering).

Guess by about the first week of December we'll be hearing about the 15k club, no?

By: precocious

precocious — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:26:40 -0800

There are some women out there who read MeFi and want memberships, right? Yes, no? Tomorrow's a new sign up day, 'kay?

See you then, ladies!

For the time being, welcome, welcome gentlemen, to our parlour. Bourbon and Brandy and fine rum for all.

Except whir, for whom I have only chastizement. Bad!

By: slipperywhenwet

slipperywhenwet — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:30:36 -0800

Initiation time!

Bring out the sheep!

Oh no you don't, I'm chafed enough already.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:44:10 -0800

Just remember, new converts:

Steven Den Beste died for your sins.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:52:54 -0800

rushmc: don't be so happy; you already have a new enemy.

I get all the best enemies.

By: skallas

skallas — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:54:10 -0800

I like the trickle method of opening the mefi pearly gates, but aren't we more or less opening the gates for those in the know? People are probably writing perl scripts to run at noon PST.

How about something like 'enter your email address here' and at midnight everyday it picks 20 people at random and emails them the good news.

By: brittney

brittney — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 20:02:43 -0800

Steven Den Beste died for your sins.

You now owe me $150 for a new monitor, as mine was just given a Diet Mountain Dew bath.

We'll work out a barter. Got Beer Nuts?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 20:28:46 -0800

Yeah, but I'm taking medication for them.

By: cyniczny

cyniczny — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 20:31:48 -0800

Another point to consider, Matt, is the MetaFilter Time you've chosen. At noon PST, it's o'dark-thirty in Australia. That's 5am for those of you trying to do the math.

Might create an imbalance of US-centric signups. Just thought I'd point that out in case you'd prefer a more global community.

Skallas' idea would help.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 20:50:09 -0800

"...in case you'd prefer a more global community."

Nah, we took Miguel and the place went into the toilet.

By: whir

whir — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 21:04:53 -0800

As a matter of fact, I was just working on a shell script to notify me if the new user page changed when I noticed that it had changed. I think skallas' idea is a good one; in addition to being less US-centric it would give Matt a good idea about the demand for new accounts (as I think someone else mentioned). On the other hand, I'm loath to suggest anything that be more work for Matt.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 21:28:57 -0800

Anything can be hacked, or tweaked, and the one I've chosen isn't perfect.

The only problem with the randomized waiting list is that it might take a long time before people get on the list.

Do I maintain the wait list indefinitely? How many times will a single person signup, in hopes of stacking the lotto in their favor? Do I limit to one spot on the wait list per IP address? Per domain?

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 21:38:24 -0800

"slipperywhenwet", as in Bon Jovi?

By: whir

whir — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 22:09:28 -0800

Hmm, good point, Matt. I was going to suggest that people could pre-fill out their forms, and then X users could be activated per day, but that still wouldn't stop people from requesting bunches of different usernames. Email addresses are easy to manufacture, and if you go by IP you could cut out people behind proxies (and not stopping dialup/dynamic IP users anyways). I suppose you could set a cookie and stop those people who aren't very technically inclined.

Maybe if you varied the times that signups were made available you could obviate cyniczny's concerns, eg have them at 3:00AM PST for a few days. Just an idea, but that sounds easier than keeping a list of applicants.

By the way, thanks very much for opening the site up again.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 22:21:27 -0800

I think the currently system is elegantly simple. As far as making things geographically fairer, why not just change the opening time by 6 hours every so often. Change the time from 12:00pm to 6:00pm to 12:00am etc. whenever Matt felt like it. That should provide equal opportunity around the world.

By: gummi

gummi — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 23:28:09 -0800

wolfdaddy: All the better to further scare the newbier-than-me's out there :-)

*cries*

By: skallas

skallas — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 23:46:21 -0800

matt: The only problem with the randomized waiting list is that it might take a long time before people get on the list.

The current method also means you may never get in at all if you aren't quick with clicking the 'sign me up' button at high noon. Lets face it, many people will probably never get in, might as well make it more random. The current method begs for abuse.

If you went with my suggestion you could cut down on abuse by not allowing popular free web-based email addresses (yahoo, hotmail), restricting IPs, etc. But at this point its a lot of work for little return. Essentially you're mainting a mailing list.

A site I know does this: they have some mailing list service (you can get a free one at yahoo obviously) and people who want to get in sign up. Every so often there's an email from the admin telling them registration is open. Those sitting at their computers frantically click in hopes of making it. Those who don't simply wait for the next announcement. It wouldn't be too hard to automate a random email every day telling people that you're allowing 20 people in. This way it doesn't matter how many email accounts they might have.

Yes, there are ways around this too, but I would think automation on this kind of level would require a lot more work than the other proposals.

By: shinybeast

shinybeast — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 00:20:51 -0800

How about opening up registration every 23 hours instead of 24? That way, "high noon" would slowly cycle its way around the world.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 00:50:49 -0800

Choose a random sign-up hour (or something shorter -- maybe fifteen minutes would do).

Have a timer appear on the front page letting people know that a sign-up period has started. Don't make it start on the hour, so people won't be hanging over their keyboards on the hour.

Show the timer only to people who are not logged in, so those with accounts will be less likely to see it and be encouraged to sign up for extra IDs, and so those without accounts will have to be regular readers before they get lucky and hit a sign-up period.

By: shinybeast

shinybeast — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 02:18:04 -0800

Yeah... I like that. But make sure that the registration page won't kick off any "page changed" scripts. Present the "open" and "closed" for registration signs as images.

By: luser

luser — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 04:55:13 -0800

We need auditions.

"Thank you. Next!"

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 08:26:02 -0800

skallas, I do think that perhaps a waiting list + random grab each day might be better, but how do you handle multiple entries into the system?

I've also considered a straight first come, first served list, with 20 being added each night and emailed, but figured that'd get loaded up quickly.

There's also the problem of people responding to the demand. If 500 people want in, and there are 20 slots, what's to stop a current member from grabbing a spot in order to sell on ebay? Do I have to start taking donations to get to the front of the line, in order to make that a better option than black market reselling?

By: BlueTrain

BlueTrain — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 08:51:33 -0800

Do I have to start taking donations to get to the front of the line, in order to make that a better option than black market reselling?

Wow...is that really a problem?

*cues briank*

It's just a website.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 09:15:02 -0800

I propose letting Matt's new system run as is for a while before the redesign comittee gets started. That way we can see which problems are actual and which are theoretical.

By: Mack Twain

Mack Twain — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 09:24:52 -0800

"Do I have to start taking donations to get to the front of the line?" Sounds like a good idea to me, Matt. Fact is, when I see less evolved sites successfully change to subscription I wonder why it hasn't happened here yet. Your management of MetaFilter is impeccable; do what you feel is best.

By: oh posey

oh posey — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 10:25:07 -0800

Where on Ebay can you bid on a slot?

By: NekulturnY

NekulturnY — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:06:47 -0800

For those of you worried about people writing perl scripts and such: don't. I got in and I'm about as illiterate as one gets in the field of code.

Just hitting "Refresh" frantically will get you a long way.

And damn am I glad I finally got in. Took me about a year.

By: Dreamghost

Dreamghost — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:06:48 -0800

finally...
the clone has returned to metafilter ;)

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:11:39 -0800

"Just hitting "Refresh" frantically will get you a long way."

That's so uncultured.

By: lychee

lychee — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:12:10 -0800

I've never loved my dinky 56k modem more than I have today. And of course, thanks to Matt for allowing us new folks a chance to join and contribute.

By: twos

twos — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:14:49 -0800

Yippeee! I have been waiting for what felt like an eternity to be able to become a member here. Reading the posts with delight and enviously wishing I could add in my piece. I'm sure that many of us newbies share my thoughts when I say thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
(I know that sounded disgustingly pathetic, but I'm really happy.)

By: ChaosKitty

ChaosKitty — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:19:05 -0800

I, too, am one of the "uncultured refreshers". ;)
I've been lurking for over a year.
Very glad to be here. Thank you, Matt.

By: kelperoni

kelperoni — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 13:25:12 -0800

There are some women out there who read MeFi and want memberships, right? Yes, no? Tomorrow's a new sign up day, 'kay?

Kay. Do I get a pony for this?

By: yhbc

yhbc — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 17:28:40 -0800

Hey, ChaosKitty! Don't forget us monkeys, now ;)

By: ChaosKitty

ChaosKitty — Sat, 27 Jul 2002 18:07:39 -0800

Hey! I'm new and a girl and I sure didn't get a pony.
Was it supposed to be in our "Welcome to Metafilter" packet or something?

*shakes envelope*

Hiya, yhbc. How could I ever forget you and the fellow monkeys? Besides, I thought the only way out was death. I'm a member for life, right? ;)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 28 Jul 2002 12:03:09 -0800

Hi all. yay! I'm in today!

where's my pony? huh? huh?

someone post an I/P thread for me! ; > paris?

Thanks Matt (and Beth!)

By: davebushe

davebushe — Sun, 28 Jul 2002 16:40:33 -0800

I'm one of the lucky 20 from today. Thanks Matt.

By: puffin

puffin — Sun, 28 Jul 2002 16:55:10 -0800

*nodnod* Me too! And I have to admit I was one of the refreshers. I missed it yesterday taking a long time to fill out to the form, but today I was prepared so I could copy and paste my email address in. Heh. :)

Ahh after a year or so of reading, finally I can post! Thank you thank you thank you Matt. And hello fellow July 28ers...

By: nemesis

nemesis — Sun, 28 Jul 2002 19:02:52 -0800

I'm also one of the lucky 20 for today and wanted to say thanks to Matt and everyone else that made new memberships possible.

Oh, and I promise to wait at least a week before I try to corrupt anyone.

By: JoanArkham

JoanArkham — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 07:29:05 -0800

Hello all! I've been lurking for ages, and I'm positively giddy to be here. I promise to try and restrain myself...

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 11:06:04 -0800

People this isn't a chat room.

I'm seriously trying to get some answers on how best to handle signups. I know you're happy to get an account and you're enthusiastic, but please don't post just to post. Re-read the original post to see that I'd like to hear people reporting problems here.

By: me3dia

me3dia — Mon, 29 Jul 2002 18:53:03 -0800

Hi everybody! I just wanted to intodu- oh wait, I'm not new.

Anyway, I think the currently implemented method is just fine. as you pointed out, Matt, just about any system can be manipulated. I seriously doubt (many) people would bother writing code to generate accounts -- we're cool, but we're not that cool -- and really, what if they do? They'll get banned if they try anything underhanded, and it's not like they can make any money off a 14,000+ user id. The biggest problem might be current members grabbing extra accounts, but even that will get old pretty quick.

By: s.e.b.

s.e.b. — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 11:24:48 -0800

You could do 10 at noon and 10 at midnight. Everyone should at least be awake at one of the times.

By: s.e.b.

s.e.b. — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 11:28:41 -0800

Or, I guess, 6-7 every 8 hours... or 5 every 6 hours... or... you know, you've probably already thought of this.

I was never here.

By: NGnerd

NGnerd — Sat, 03 Aug 2002 14:18:15 -0800

After a year or so of snooping, and a bit of frustrating attempts to get in on the 20 logins for free (i could never get on, and even when i got the link to the sign up page i didn't type fast enough (darn my fat fingers)). But i do have to say paying $5 is fine by me, it's cheaper then a movie and i've gotten a heck of allot more entertainment from it.
However, i'd love to see how much you can collect from new users who have been salivating to post versus the donations from old users who have been on awhile.

By: sgt.serenity

sgt.serenity — Sun, 04 Aug 2002 16:20:11 -0800

there must be tons of people who no longer use their

membership .....no way i've ever seen 14000

people posting on this........

cant you have an expiry date or something to free up space

for more users? like a year or something?

anyway cheers matt , big hugs to you....