Bitcoin Forum

The fact that smart (new) people can't participate in other discussions doesn't do any favours to this forum.
When I see a nice comment, I'm not going to the Newbie forum to post a reply.
I guess this attitude is the reflection of the 'early adopters are superior' mentality that is not the good side of the bitcoin idea.

I was quite agitated by the 'newb rule' myself.
In my opinion, even having new member's replies/new posts moderated before posting publicly would be better. After the 5 posts/4 hours, and they seem to be 'legit' or intelligent enough, let em loose.

Growing pains or deeper flaws in the model? Hmm.

Some forums have a lot worse restrictions than the ones here. Personally, I look at the whitelist thread and see people with between one and  three posts all going "hi, I'm not a scammer, please let me out" or "i have very important job to do, please let me out" or even "i wanna sell something let me out!". You'd think they'd read the first post, which includes simple instructions about demonstrating knowledge of bitcoins...

I really can't see a problem with that sort of person being restricted to this forum. It suggests to me that they are scammers, and who needs them? (The latest post as I write this is "I'd like to become non newbie. An Un-used Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license is waiting to get placed to the marketplace Smiley." the person has one post. Screams scammer to me.)

If you do have an honest, thoughtful response to a thread in another forum, post it in the whitelist thread and say "this is why I want out". Otherwise, go and make a few pointless posts in other threads, idle for a bit, and just have a bit of patience.

Yes it is kindof shitty.  But I'd rather have this little subsection be shitty than the main forum.
Things could be worse.

Completely agree that being restricted to the newbie forum is annoying however, I just have another hour left before I get released into the greater bitcoin forum.
**can't wait**
 8)

Ambulance you've got a chance, in a hearse, it's gotta be worse.

Nobody is making you stay if you don't like it.

I think they are just growing pains but also a little naivety in how to run a forum. Very few places I've ever seen work like this.

And they may not like spammers but there are better ways to deal with them as most forum owners know. Think about it - how many forums have a newbie area like this?

The other thing is that if bitcoin really takes off then this forum is too small a concept for a central discussion area on a new currency. There needs to be a better solution. It actually seems a little amateur in many ways in that regard but I guess you have to take baby steps first.

lol nubz

I don't understand why they even block private messages...

And now that you have 1+ posts, they're unblocked!  >_>

As someone who used to moderate a fairly high traffic forum (quite a bit larger than this one), having this kind of restriction can be a good thing for the community. It keeps the spammers out, the bads who don't read from just posting 'how do I do this?', and the dedicated people around, since the previous two aren't there.

Please keep discussion of the newbie restrictions to the Newbie restrictions sticky. Yes, we read it.