Well there's no PV equivalent here, so probably relatively measured by comparison.
We burn it to the ground and start over in a new promised land.
I'm hoping you guys will spend some time thinking/planning for this while you're small enough to be able to.
Maybe you can't stop a large group of one-sided users, but you can try to set it up so that group doesn't collect so much power that they can't be dislodged at some point in future. The rules at voat are set up to exclude people of certain opinions - I hope you're careful not to go down that path.
We have talked about this before. Invite only for a week or two would probably be the go-to option because so few people know about the site, an influx would quickly disappear if account registration wasn't available. Another option would be raising XP restrictions for things like voting/posting/sub creation on new accounts for a while.
I don't know what you discussed previously, so please excuse my ignorance.
Details matter a lot...
Do all users get to invite, just users over some account score, or just admins? How many users can they invite and how many users can the invited invite? The website seems to be 80% inactive accounts. Many of those look just like me, and will have accumulated a modest XP level before falling silent. Some of those will be blatant sleeper accounts and can become active at inconvenient times.
Minor point: Do downvotes detract from XP scores at present? I hope not.
I claim the name XP is incorrect. If you tie a score to upvotes, it doesn't measure experience, but accumulated popularity. If you get a large influx of users who have the same ideological flavour they will quickly exceed whatever "XP" threshhold you wish to set. The stalwarts around here might have experience and have made great contributions to the website, but the newbies will be popular.
My first attempt at designing a ranking system that better reflects user contributions to the website over time is this:
If a user contributes x posts or y comments, all of which attract at least z upvotes (ignoring downvotes), over a particular w day period, they get 1 point for that period. If they contribute something, but don't meet the above conditions, they get 0 points for the w day period. If they don't log in or just lurk, they get -1 points for the w day period, down to a minimum of 0 accumulated points.
Under a system like this with numbers x,y,z,w; regular website contributors easily accumulate points over time, and inactive accounts have their scores steadily degraded. I think deleting completely inactive accounts after a certain time is probably a good idea as well. The system above (or a fair mutation) would more easily deal with a sudden rush of new users, and would be a fairer way to restrict the rights of some website users.
The problem of alts remains, and I have no idea how to solve that without impinging on users privacy.
We have talked about this a lot as we all saw what happened over at voat over the last years. some context.
A mass migration of users would be no problem.
A mass migration of "crusaders" or "hate subs" would. Luckily these fanatics are finding their way to voat. The "hardcore" crusaders know us and hate phuks. For now we have the provider TOS to fence with (rather not but it's a tool) I would also like to state; we do not see a difference between left and right in this behavior and will act against both.
Unlike voat we have 3 admins spread over 3 timezones that are active on a daily basis on phuks. So there can be interventions/discussion directly with any groups from the top down if/when shit hits the fan.
With these active admins; There will be no room for "PV-like" brigading and bullying while squiggling it's way into the "grey zone" left by admin absence.
The rollout plan would be something along these lines:
influx starts.
Check technical/data. (can we handle the traffic/do we need to boost it?)
Open communication/welcome new user mass-influxes with an admin post.
When it's an organised group (a sub jumps ship), admins open communication with mods. (mods then can communicate with users)
Raise userlevel/post-restrictions to prevent an overload
As a last measure we can throw phuks.co into "invite only" (rather not, as I think voat missed out on a large takeover of healthy users during "the blackening"
Main part of our vision is admins who are actively involved in the community, approachable and open for fair discussions.
Please see my reply to @PMYA.
The intention for open communication and interaction is much appreciated, but I am sceptical about how effective you guys could be against a big group of unhelpful users who are all of the same mind, especially with your current methods for ranking users.
I wonder how this site will react if a large group seeking to push a one sided narrative comes.