Indie Hackers not invite-only anymore? My opinion!
Today, I discovered that IndieHackers is not invite-only anymore! I have mixed feelings.
Without invite codes, people don't need to show any effort to get into the community. It has both good and bad sides. The good side is that new people who want to join IndieHackers now can do it with a few clicks. However, since they don't have to put in the effort to join, they may be less active than those who had to provide an invitation code. That's the downside.
I am the perfect example of this. I see an interesting website, I sign up and give them my details. Within ten seconds, I have an account. While it's nice to have an account and "reserve" a username, I give nothing back to the community. Thankfully, enough people give something back to the community, which keeps the ecosystem fairly balanced.
What are your thoughts about it? What are your feelings?
PS: This is my first post on IndieHackers, so if you have any feedback, let me know!
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In July 2021, spam was out of control on IH. And when I say spam, I do mean spam. I'm not hyperbolically referring to mere low-effort posts. I'm referring to professionals who signed up and posted ads on the site for things like viagra, escorts, hacks, etc., in return for somehow making money.
We tried lots of things, but the invite-only system was by far the most effective fix. Spammers were unable to join, and those who invited spammers had their invite privileges revoked and were banned themselves. Over a period of months, spammers completely disappeared from IH.
Obviously, there's no free lunch. The invite-only system had the downside of preventing lots of great people from joining, too. But it was worth it to give us breathing room.
Since then, we were able to do a good job cleaning up the forum. We could've moved faster and earlier, but it's undeniable that the homepage in recent weeks looks much better than it has in a long time. This is in part because we're devoting moderation resources to making the forum great, rather than to constantly fighting spammers.
As of yesterday, we're back to not requiring invite codes, so spammers will begin joining again. I'm sure it already it's happening. But it'll take time for them to ramp up, and in the meantime we intend to devote some moderation resources to vetting new signups. I'm not 100% sure on how we'll do this, but we're considering options.
For example, one idea is to prevent new signups from making posts, and only allow them to make comments. If their comments get downvoted, they get banned (which should catch spammers making spam comments). But if they're consistently making thoughtful comments, they get promoted into fully-fledged members, and we'd keep the exact promotion criteria a secret to make it harder to game.
I agree that the home page quality is better. That's why I'm coming back more frequently. I suggest that you can refer to the mechanism of stack overflow. Spams are not easy to deal with anyway
Thanks for your hard work
Thanks! What are you referring to by "the mechanism of stack overflow"?
There is a score system for a user in SO. When you just open an account, you only have basic functions like answer a post.
When you get more upvotes, you will have higher scores and unlock more advance features, e.g. upvote other replies, open a thread, etc.
Of course, higher score users look trustworthy because the scores are hard earned. These users are high contributors for sure
yes, this! You earn more privileges the more you contribute in meaningful ways, and you could introduce badges too :)
Love the idea of people having to make a certain number of comments before being allowed to post. Will hopefully filter out people who only sign up to promote themselves instead of providing tangible value.
Exactly. The community is at its best when people are discussing, supporting, and connecting with each other in the comments. The more people who are here for that (rather than to just make drive-by self-promotional posts), the better.
Just like some subreddits do it, where you need a certain amount of karma to submit posts.
This is super exciting, Courtland.
Same here. I'm one of those who are coming back thanks to the high-quality homepage over the last weeks. I want to connect with real indie hackers who are actually building stuff.
The last approach could work. Maybe an AI to identify bad posts would help a lot but also requires a lot of work to implement and train.
Do you think Hotmail and Gmail has solved the spam issue?
Filter out trash/temp emails would probably help.
Hi Courtland, I’m super grateful to have been able to join today - without an invite code & no intention to spam, of course.
I gotta say, much of what I do is hard and I’m glad that joining a forum like this has not been hard.
Already today - Sunday - I feel more welcome and productive contributing here than I ever do on LinkedIn … but I frankly wouldn’t have gotten that feeling without first joining and being able to contribute. So the point of my circle reasoning/rambling is THANK YOU 🤗 & hope to add some value for all the folks here trying to play their best game! ✨
Thanks for this context. I like the sense of a private community as its more helpful and less self interested. Maybe a members/invite only channel or tier could be a good middle ground?
Maybe add a phone + credit card based verification for quick full member privileges. If one is found spamming, they will be charged 50$ + and the ban. More power to stripe.
Or as you/others said, people can earn full member privileges by good participation (over time).
Or people can earn full member privileges with an invite code.
This makes things difficult for those like myself who largely lurk but occasionally wish to post something in earnest. Happens to me on occasion on Reddit because I don't post very often so sometimes when I try to post on a sub that has similar rules I discover my account doesn't meet their requirements to post. I know your metrics and rules would be different that those on Reddit. And it doesn't solve the problem as bad actors can still purchase accounts with good reputation. So I would suggest when implementing your new spam fighting system looking at post frequency as a potential indicator and flag very frequent posters for review or even automatic suspension.
Good luck, it's not an easy problem to solve.
I joined before invite codes were even a thing, and when I saw invite codes I had mixed feelings. I feel like spam will always be a thing no matter what and that no matter what system we put into place spammers will always find a work around.
Just like I always say being bad is easier than being good. Although a lot of you will probably disagree.
I joined November 2020 as it no longer says on the hover thing.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
I am one of those persons that are happy because they can stop searching and asking for invite codes. But I can understand the mixed feelings. It is not the same to sign up or to invest time to get an invitation. I also hope that the quality does not suffer from this decision.
I'm also mixed on this issue. I liked the concept of people having to put some effort into finding a code to participate, but I don't know if it actually improved the quality of discussions on the site. It may have, overall, simply just kept the great posters out.
So, I for one am glad it's gone and that now more entrepreneurs can share with us their failures and victories. If it turns out the spammers come back, the invite-codes can always come back.
I'd be less worried about the activity of users and more worried about the spammy posts and things that generally don't bring value to the community. I find that typically the larger a community is, the less quality it has.
Actually the quality of posts fell down by quite a bit during invite only phase. I’ve managed to get invite during that time, and god it was frustrating not being capable to share when I had something to comment. Wonder how many non spammy people decided not too bother and move on. And the persistent spammy type of guys they found their way in anyways.
That may be true, but things were better a few years back when things were smaller and even open sign-up.
At one point I thought the community is gone, and only circle jerk group of self promoters left. I was lurking for way too long to join the community. When I joined i thought it was already crumbling, the good thing when spammers leave good guys come back. I hope they have a way to kick them out
I'm happy to be here, thank you for posting this. I didn't noticed until I saw this post :)
Ah, so that's why I couldn't access my invite-codes. Hopefully the IndieHackers team have implemented good moderation systems now that it is no longer invite-only.
That's how I found out that it's no longer invite-only!
I got 3 codes after 3 months at one time. But, they are now totally useless.
Hope so many people will join and provide value.
The invite codes were originally implemented to combat spam, but got a lot of pushback from the community. The team must have found another way. I'm looking forward to the forums being both inclusive and high-quality again.
I think their engagement got lower, and the posts became more self promo and less about being indiehacker. During the invite only phase.
Great to hear that the invite only system helped out. IH was spiraling towards becoming the new DesignerNews. But the moment the restrictions are gone, spammers will start flooding and they will find a way to game the system.
Only being able to comment and after a certain karma isn't an easy fix sadly. What happens if I open 30 accounts with disposable emails and just vote-ring every comment I make? I can just visit a random post and say something like "This is very helpful, I learned a lot!" then give myself 30 upvotes and pat myself on the back.
The community should be active alongside IH moderators. Even after the Invite Code requirement came I could still find spammy SEO posts on the popular tab. These posts had positive upvotes and the same spammy comments. So, if you come across something that's not obvious spam but a ploy to get traffic/no-follow links, please downvote it as well.
I was happy to see that signups are open now. I only came across IH recently, and I didn't want to go around begging for an invite. Joining the community and becoming active through IH is preferable to doing it through something like Twitter, IMO.
I think it's reasonable to say that there should be a minimum bar. But I'm brand new here and I'm happy to be more than a lurker. I've been part of accelerators, pre seed programs, yc startup school, and I just want a place to talk about making my own software that doesn't 100% revolve around how to get vc $ (or, how to get a technical co founder).
Welcome to IH, mate.
I also one of those people who wanted to join IH. So, I approached to lot of people for code. But, I didn't get code easily. I like the process.
At the end, I am very active on IH. Hope so I will remain active. I learned and knew many amazing things through IH.
Thank you fellow indie hackers. :)
Another idea is to charge a small amount of money to join. Maybe $ 10 or something.