Its true that this system blocks spammers and marketers. At the same time it also prevents a large amount of genuine users who want to take part in the dicussions because its hard to get an invite. So overall the system does more harm than good.
> Invitations are used as a mechanism for spam-control, to slow registrations to a pace we can acculturate and to encourage users to be nice, not to make the Lobsters userbase an elite club.
I'm personally not happy with the randomness of the chat invite system. I have some ideas on how to streamline it but I haven't had time to present them, and I lack the Ruby chops to actually contribute to the site's code.
It's not that hard to get an invite. Ask in an HN thread and there's a good chance somebody will hook you up, assuming they either know you, OR can tell from your HN comment/submission history that you're not some weirdo who is going to spam lobste.rs with crap.
> Ask in an HN thread and there's a good chance somebody will hook you up
That works for users who have seen this thread. How does a person who has not seen this thread knows that they have to ask in some random HN thread to get an invite? What about users who don't have an HN account?
