invite only sites

[Gimgak]

What are your thoughts on invite only sites, and would you ever run a forum/website this way? At first it seems a bit elitest, but at least to me it makes a whole lot of sense for some niches in clearing out those who shouldn't be on the site.

Let's take a certain music site into account. Now to actually get onto the website, you either have to be invited by a friend or pass an interview on their IRC channel showing that you deserve to get in. With these two options almost anyone should be able to get in, yet on the internet you can always find tons of people going "elitist wankers, websitename is a bunch of pejorative term for either homosexuals or black people.

To me these seem like people I would never want to communicate with in the first place, so that simple interview or invite process works like a charm. I understand that a site needs something alluring about it for this to work, so it might be best for a owner to have open sign ups until reaching a userbase of a few thousand before closing up shop.

Now I'll ask, what are your thoughts on this?

 

[Branden]

I totally agree with you. I think it is a good idea to get a few thousand people, then close it so that you can only have people you want to be on the site.

It's a great idea and I might do it with my new forum that is coming out.

 

[Gimgak]

Glad to see I'm not the only one.

This is also beneficial when it comes to banned users. It's a way bigger hassle for them to go through the process again and hope they aren't caught once more. The aforementioned site also bans those whose invites are banned so people don't tend to just give them out to strangers/troublemakers.

 

[AnAccount]

Well, as you said, it would depend on what sort of website or forum you want to set up. Although I do agree with you on the most part. I suppose this coudl also be good for weeding out bots as well. I never join up with such sites, but the concept as a whole is a generally good idea.

 

[Deleted member 1609]

I wouldn't call it elitist. A site would be elitist if they, say, had users take an IQ test before being able to join. This, on the other hand, is more of a way to weed out people who are just going to ruin the fun for the other members. I can see it working for sites that have truly unique things to offer, but it probably wouldn't work for most forums.

 

[AnAccount]

I wouldn't call it elitist. A site would be elitist if they, say, had users take an IQ test before being able to join. This, on the other hand, is more of a way to weed out people who are just going to ruin the fun for the other members. I can see it working for sites that have truly unique things to offer, but it probably wouldn't work for most forums.

Yeah, I had a feeling that you had to be pretty unique in order to pull something like this off. Assuming a site is unique, this could stop people from ripping content and copying the site completely.