Rusty, the guy who runs Kuro5hin, has gotten fed up with abusive posters. He's going to implement a new system for new members.
The idea is this: someone creates a new account. They go through the normal email confirmation. At this point they cannot do anything. Before you have the privileges of a user, you must get an existing user to sponsor you. That just means that some user with the ability to sponsor others goes to a page and enters the new user's nickname. These two are now associated, and if a user gets kicked off the site, their sponsor does too.
This sounds like a good idea. People are already complaining on kuro5hin about the idea, but really, why should it be easy to gain membership into a club? It reminds me of the way private societies like the Masons work. New candidates can apply for membership, but need a couple of sponsors to be accepted into the club. Sponsors have to know the new member pretty well before sponsoring him, because they don't want their reps to be besmirched. And any latent jerk-tendencies in the new guy will be stifled, because he knows his sponsor will take the heat for whatever he does. Maybe Boing Boing should implement a similar system if we decide to allow comments again. Link
