my thoughts on going invite-only

well, didn't think we will get here, but we did. An def went nuclear this time and while this decision is certainly strange on the surface and definitely polarizing (last time i read comments under his blog there was clear separation of people who supported it and people who called it gatekeeping and beginning of the end), this is probably the only right decision you can make in this website's today's economy.

yes, the site was organically growing and exploded to have over 2 mil users. but what i can say as a counterpoint - this growth rapidly outpaces moderation recruiting it seems. the platform is definitely understaffed with basically a single developer and a bunch of moderators, and don't tell me about hiring more - finding suitable people to fill out moderator positions is not as easy as you would think - on my job we have a whole bunch of full-stack/back-end developer job positions open and we couldn't find suitable candidates for like a year or two. hiring people is not easy, guys.

plus, what's this growth is like? there are different kinds of growth. i would get it if all of these 2+ mil accounts were active. but in my practice, being on this site for 3 years under different accounts, most of people register, maybe apply a basic premade layout, and then never log in again. how much of these 2 mil+ people are essentially dead souls? we don't know, but i can guess roughly half definitely are. and let's remember a problem that plagued spacehey for a long time - waves and waves of gore, nsfw, promoter and ad accounts, plus waves of internet safety illiterate teens getting into trouble and fueling stupid drama left and right.

this makes me conclude that while the site was organically and rapidly growing, this growth comes with a lot of essentially dead weight due to today's reality, and went far out of control. and if you see it that way - going invite-only is a good way to give the site a timeout, slow down traffic and mitigate the dead weight portion of it, and reinforce moderation team and safety practices with incoming traffic being restricted.

of course i hope this restriction will be lifted at some point, and this will be necessary sooner or later. but for now, this is a great opportunity to prepare SpaceHey to actually acommodate for the Goliath-scale traffic it recieved. so don't get me wrong - i agree with contrarians that if this is a permanent decision, this is a very, very bad decision. it's not exactly perfect as a temporary restriction as well, but you know, it seems rather dire and desperate, so, whatever it takes to get moderation to a level that would allow for free flowing traffic to be managable in the future.

that's it for now, tomo out