Existing members can send their invites to non-redditor friends and that's probably the best way to go about it right now.

I don't think there's an overwhelming risk of having just a transplant of reddit culture seeing as many of the veterans are so quick to helpfully and constructively point out the differences between the two and the new users are catching on somewhat quickly.

On that note there certainly are aspects that would be nice to see. Right now the only downside to snapzu is the lack of the utterly massive community reddit had, and for right now redditors are the largest user influx which I regard as a good thing (though I'm horribly biased in this regard). We need more users to grow some of the smaller more niche communities.

Really, the one thing I don't want to see is a bunch of people becoming inactive after the heat dies down because some of their interests were not being fed here due to the small user side.

1) The invite system will artificially slow the rate of growth, allowing new members to acclimate to the cultural climate here without drastically changing it. Since reddit-digg comparisons are so popular, I would not be surprised if reddit's open door policy let a lot of the toxic elements of the old digg community through far too rapidly etc etc.

It seems like such a minor detail, but it might be the most telling factor in preventing the bloat described by BlankWIndow

2) One would hope that since so much of this recent drama is from a perceived lack of communication between the reddit admins and moderators (I was never a mod over at reddit so I can't say one way or the other what the actual situation was) that the snapzu team would take extra care to keep the lines of communication as open as possible.

3) At least for right now, there is a great reluctance from many of the migrants to radically change the inherent culture here. I think this is also at least partially owing to part one, but as long as the mentality can be maintained that redditors are welcome here, but this is not reddit and the toxicity that came to define reddit will be discouraged here, things won't go too far south.

The question is infrastructure. Certainly without an invite system the number of people trying to sign up could have tripled overnight, but a site can't go from a relatively small community instantly to a relatively large one. Voat has been down for some time now because of this issue, while snapzu, because of the decision to limit the influx has remained up.

In principle, I completely agree with you and think the idea of exclusivity is detrimental to a community based service, but in reality the options were to either limit it for a time while upgrading the internal infrastructure to handle more users or to get hugged to death where no one could access it. In that scenario I think the latter option is more fair to the people that have been here well before all us refugees started showing up.

Hi Everyone!

First a huge thank you to Zomb for setting this tribe up so people have a place to come when they're facing these problems.

I'm a 25 year old dirty writer type who works in addiction treatment. I have over a decade of experience in the mental health circuit both on the client side and practitioner side and genuinely believe that communities like this are our first, last and best line of defense against suicide and self destruction.

My only objectives here are to lend a sympathetic and empathetic ear to all those who need it and to make sure this place remains a strong and vibrant support network for anyone who is battling with depression and suicidal ideation or is close to someone experiencing these issues.

As always if there is a true emergency the national suicide hotline for the United States is at - 1 (800) 273-8255 and it would be greatly appreciated if people from other locales could give us their local lines as a resource for those who need it.

I'm happy to have the chance to give to others what has been so freely given to me in the past. My ears and my heart are open.