You've all heard it for months now: "This isn't a small site anymore.". And it's true. The number of members has ballooned. But somehow, the number of regular users hasn't seen such drastic growth. Why?

The reason is simple, and everyone knows it. Most of the signups are "junk" members. The sort of people who make a couple posts, and then forget about the site for a month. Worse yet are immature members who go on spasmodic blitzes of spam, leet speak, or anything else that enters their head. (Note that there are several regulars who are guilty of this, but usually they tend to show at least some signs of intelligence when they do.)

Where do all these people come from? For the most part, they join because of 64Digits' growing visibility (awards, mentions in articles, sig links and of course the users' constant talking about the site). People eagerly join up, but then they find that the site is rather closely knit, and that becoming a "regular" takes work. Then they lose interest, vandalize, spam, etc.

Are they really a problem? I say yes, mainly because all these extra users create a nasty mash of blogs and comments that obscure the regular posts, which are what most people want to read. Now, I don't have a problem with new users, as long as they show some maturity and post frequently enough to be remembered. Most members can even put up with people who don't post regularly, as long as they show a spark of intelligence.

So what can be done? Some have suggested an invitation-only community, but that would be too restrictive. A better suggestion I saw was to require everyone (minus a few "legacy" accounts) to log in at least once in a certain time or have their account nuked. My personal idea would be to use the login time idea in conjunction with a user trial period.

The trial period would work as follows: a user signs up for 64Digits, and he is granted access. He can do everything except participate in other user's trials. During the month long trial period, he would have some sort of notification by his username or on his blog, and people could either vote for or against him, like a karma system. At the end of the trial period, he must meet a minimum limit, let's say positive 5. If he passes he is a permanent member, but he still cannot vote for other trial members for two more months. If he doesn't pass, he no longer exists. I believe this would effectively eliminate most of the clutter and preserve sanity.

Now, this isn't a totally fair system, as it tends to maintain the status quo and has a potential for abuse. But I think something need to be done. As politicians think: "Something must be done. This is something, therefore it must be done." What do you think the something is?