Will referral links shared as invites for newbies not be a way to help add content quality to this forum?
It is in the sense that, referral links from seniors or old knowledgeable members automatically bestows the responsibility of mentorship on the person sharing the link to the newbies of whom accepts and clicks to join through the referral links they were shared to join this Bitcoin talk forum with?
What's your opinion?
How exactly could referral spam affect the quality of the forum?
Allowing the placement of referral links would only bring more off-topic spam posts, and that has nothing to do with newbie accounts only. Many legendary members have such status only because they had enough activity before merit introduction.
All these centres on the benefits attached to the referral programs to determine the attitude of users to it. If the benefit is not juicy, people will not misuse it, just as we see now. But of course, if it wouldn't be juicy, why implement it? People will not even think it twice to look away if it is not juicy since one can naturally invite anyone they want directly through the direct website of the forum.
For this, it can only mean that the incentive attached to the referral programs will be attractive enough, and behold, many users will misuse the advantage. So we should expect spam, more worthless accounts and most importantly too many abandoned and banned accounts.