Post count and access to AM

[Serris]

Malte's response to this thread:

I also think Serris raised a valid point. Not everyone capable of associating 20 words with other words delivers sufficient information that way to show that he or she is to be trusted with the somewhat more sensitive information of the AM section.

made me think a bit. How exactly can we determine who is "worthy" to see the AM section? Post count is not exactly reliable, especially if Party Room posts are counted. But I am worried about taking the other extreme and requiring individual approval for each member (I know of a forum that did that and all it did was polarize the forum to a disturbing extent. For instance, "elites" would taunt the lower members with little snippets from the restricted forum <usually jokes and funny anecdotes>).

[Malte279]

A 100% security is of course impossible so even in the AM section one should never post anything that one things could cause any trouble to oneself. The post count based admission to this section of the GOF is not meant to bar people from the GOF, but only to get to know them a little before they enter the section. If somebody really shows he or she is a troublemaker of sorts we may decide not to admit that person to the AM section, but that is something that must be done specifically as usually you can enter the section once you reach the postcount without the need of any additional admission on the parts of the admins. There is no individual approving of members only an individual disapproval if there is some real cause of concern within the members first posts (I think so far this happened a single time long ago). So the risk of elitism seems to be tolerably limited, especially as the required post count is not very high.

[Petrie.]

Staff are discussing this now...you're not the only one who has brought this up.  My initial reaction is that I think there are topics in AM that aren't sensitive enough to be in there, and they would fit better in the Fridge.  Stuff like "GM bankruptcy" or "Stand on Walmart" aren't as sensitive as stuff like "Islam" or "Holocaust Shootings" or things like that.

I think what will come out of it is a redefining what should end up in AM and what stuff is fine for the Fridge.

[Serris]

I guess a good guideline for AM material is anything likely to arouse heated tempers.

Examples:

Gun control
Sexuality
Religion
Race
Abortion
Death penalty

[Petrie.]

That was basically the point of it from the beginning.

[Littlefoot1616]

That's pretty much what the AM section was constructed for in the first place Serris. I guess with the accumulation of new members, topics got a little more varied and have since brached out from the initial intention. Call it, topic evolution. All those topics you've mentioned we've pretty much covered (in some cases there is more than 1 page on a given topic).