Temporary community creation rate limiting
This afternoon, someone called to our attention that a group of people are creating a high number of communities to "squat" on popular/in-demand usernames, then offering to give away, trade, or sell those usernames to the people who want them. While we don't want to place limits on the number of journals or communities people can maintain on Dreamwidth for personal use, bulk registration for malicious use like that falls into the category of exploiting the service, and in the interest of fairness for everyone, we do need to place limits on that.
We've renamed the accounts that were registered in bulk, in order to free up those usernames for legitimate use, and we've temporarily instated a rate-limit on the number of communities an account can create. For a limited time -- probably just during our open beta phase -- accounts will only be able to create up to three communities per week.
We think this strikes the right balance between encouraging legitimate growth and preventing automated abuse. If this limit turns out to be too low, we can raise it, and this is intended to only be a temporary measure. For the time being, though, we'd like to make sure that everyone has an equal chance to have access to resources.
Again, this isn't meant to place restrictions on legitimate usage. You're welcome to create multiple personal accounts, or maintain multiple communities. We're just taking steps to block things like people registering 100+ communities with popular usernames and then trying to trade or sell those usernames. If you run into problems with this rate-limit, you can contact us through Support and we can see what we can do.
We've renamed the accounts that were registered in bulk, in order to free up those usernames for legitimate use, and we've temporarily instated a rate-limit on the number of communities an account can create. For a limited time -- probably just during our open beta phase -- accounts will only be able to create up to three communities per week.
We think this strikes the right balance between encouraging legitimate growth and preventing automated abuse. If this limit turns out to be too low, we can raise it, and this is intended to only be a temporary measure. For the time being, though, we'd like to make sure that everyone has an equal chance to have access to resources.
Again, this isn't meant to place restrictions on legitimate usage. You're welcome to create multiple personal accounts, or maintain multiple communities. We're just taking steps to block things like people registering 100+ communities with popular usernames and then trying to trade or sell those usernames. If you run into problems with this rate-limit, you can contact us through Support and we can see what we can do.
no subject
no subject
no subject
There is a community I'm a member of and they were confused by the name change. I'll let them know your response.
no subject
I understand being vigilant, but if the comms were active, you might have at least checked to see if they were in use before mass-deleting.
no subject
no subject
And since she was acting for a group of people, I don't think 20 was excessive.