Ability to opt-out of account creation community promo

[zarhooie]

Title:
Ability to opt-out of account creation community promo

Area:
communities, account creation

Summary:
I would like the ability to opt any community I maintain out of the community promo that displays when one has created a new account.

Description:
I've created several accounts (for various reasons) and thus have had occasion to notice that some communities I moderate are displaying on the community promo area when a new account has been created. The area says something like "check out these cool places on Dreamwidth!" and then lists a seemingly random assortment of communities one can join.

My suggestion is to allow community admins to opt their community out of being listed here. I am an admin of several communities that are private or otherwise inappropriate to put on such a list. Right now, they show up on that list and I am concerned that being unable to join certain communities may create an unwelcoming feel to Dreamwidth. By allowing community admins to opt out, it would help to prevent uncomfortable situations like the one I describe above.

If this is implemented, I would think setting it up as a console command would help to prevent clutter on other options pages. I think it'd work best as an opt out policy, as this would not change the existing behavior unless intended to do so.

Poll #1047 Ability to opt-out of account creation community promo

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
31 (60.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
16 (31.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
3 (5.9%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.0%)

Comments

[melannen]

It's genererated as soon as you enter your username - before you put in any other profile info, including age or interests. I'm pretty sure it's based entirely on who you got your code from.

[sofiaviolet]

This. I've created accounts using my own codes, and it just culls the list from communities I'm a member of/subscribe to.

(It was convenient for me, since I wanted the accounts to join the community I set up. But not great for everyone.)

[azurelunatic]

It is.

When you offer someone a code and it's got your name as a URL argument, the communities you maintain show up in that list.

So, properly, this would be a per-user setting, not a per-community setting: an auto-checked "offer these communities to people signing up from my invite code", because one maintainer of, say, beginningcocks may want to show it off, and another may not want to emphasize that portion of their maintainerships.

One could then micromanage this by checking/unchecking stuff before offering a code to someone in particular.

[triadruid]

Weird. I'd almost want to suggest that we move the suggestion to after interests and such to generate a more useful list for the user, but that's way off-topic for this particular idea. :)