I'm going to outline an upcoming change to the library. Sometime in the near future, I will be changing the access requirements for the library section. Feel free to discuss and share your thoughts in this thread.
What will change
There will be minimum post/account age requirements to post in the library, and rather than give a text wall to explain it, here's how the system will check to see if you can access the library:
- Are you a Benefactor? If yes, you have access to the library, if no:
- Have you ever posted a book share? If yes, you have access to the library, if no:
- Have you made 10 posts in the occult sections? If yes, you have access to the library, if no:
- Have you been registered on WF for at least one week? If yes:
- Have you made at least 1 post in the occult sections in the last week? If yes, you have access to the library, if no:
- If you have none of the above, you do not have access to the library.
So essentially, you need to either have posted at least one book share, made 10 posts in total in the occult sections, been registered for at least one week and made 1 post in an occult section, or be Benefactor in order to access the library.
The individual details may be fine tuned over time.
Why is this happening?
Two main reasons, firstly, I simply don't want WF to be a file share focused site. It's nice to have the library as a supplement to out discussions, and as a service to help spread as much awareness and knowledge of the occult as possible, but the primary goal is to do that via discussions as a forum. I can see that there are thousands of people per year just joining WF to download books and contribute nothing. While I have no hard feelings about that, the concern is that WF will end up primarily being used as a file sharing site, which it is not, and was never intended to be.
Secondly, I want to encourage more active discussion about occult topics rather than just pointing people towards books.
Yes, I understand the concern that this will lead to a spike in low quality posting from people who just join the site and want to spam out the post requirement ASAP to get to the book they want to download, but I strongly believe we can counteract this with measures such as requiring a minimum character count in posts made in the occult section (which is something I've been thinking about doing for a while anyway). Not to mention, we have an extremely competent staff roster, who if they express such a desire, can be expanded with new staff members. I also personally believe that a lot of the people coming on WF looking for specific books are people who are already dabbling in or experienced in the occult, and who aren't contributing because they simply don't have to. I've been made aware by some that we could potentially lose out on some members who would contribute much later on of their own free will after downloading a book from WF, but there isn't strong evidence of that in the metrics (that it would outweigh the amount of people who are introverted or lazy who would contribute if they had to).
Also, if it turns out that this ends up causing more trouble than it's worth, it would be easy to undo and go back to business as usual.
Why allow Benefactors to access the library? Is this a cash grab?
I assure you no one is going to be paying $4 to download one PDF. This is simply because it would be unethical to bar parts of the site from people who are actually paying to keep WF running.
Is this the makings of a plan to remove the library from WF?
No, there is no such plan. I love having the library on WF - but to help our members educate themselves on the occult so that we can have more in-depth and meaningful discussions about occult topics to further WF's ultimate goal of being a community that focuses on bringing more people into the occult, and bringing more occult knowledge to as many people as possible. WF is not a library, WF is a forum with a library.
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