Newbie restrictions

[fulepp]

5 messages and 4 hours.... Let we see what else in the newbie section...

[Maged]

Maybe another way to be able to post without the full wait times would be by "verification" or sponsorship from an existing member 

We will generally whitelist users who are vouched for by reputable members in the whitelist request thread.

[karbonxx]

My first post. 4 more to go woot woot. This sucks.

[Manny-OnlyOneTV]

It's good that a proactive approach is being taken against the spammers.

[Jaccubin]

I think it is gravely worrying that measures to prevent spammers don't hurt spammers at all but restrict people like myself who only recently heard about bitcoin and are eager to get into the nitty gritty of the matter to a subforum where nothing interesting is going on other than people making posts for the sake of making posts to become trusted enough to be allowed to make real posts and engage with the community.

[J.P. Larocque]

Spot on, Jaccubin.  The Newbies section is a ghetto, plain and simple, and I feel a bit insulted and compromised to be even posting here to meet their arbitrary restrictions.

Real spammers need not be slowed by this farce, thanks to web scraping, Markov chain text generators, and a little simple programming to spread out fake introductions/fluff over a period of time.  But those of us that want to play by the rules and bring value to the forums are being slowed down.

Quality is a difficult problem to solve in online communities, but rather than copy good work as Slashdot, reddit, and the like have, or innovate with something cool and potentially very useful like reputation networks, the people that run this forum came up with one of the most bone-headed ways to "moderate" this place I've ever heard of.  It's something I would expect from the torrent/scene communities, but not from an above-board public forum.

Unfortunately, here I am, biting the bullet because I'd like to participate in the marketplace or maybe create some cool Bitcoin-based services and announce them on the forum, and I can't do that as a loln3wbz0r.

[MoonShadow]

Spot on, Jaccubin.  The Newbies section is a ghetto, plain and simple, and I feel a bit insulted and compromised to be even posting here to meet their arbitrary restrictions.

Real spammers need not be slowed by this farce, thanks to web scraping, Markov chain text generators, and a little simple programming to spread out fake introductions/fluff over a period of time.  But those of us that want to play by the rules and bring value to the forums are being slowed down.

Quality is a difficult problem to solve in online communities, but rather than copy good work as Slashdot, reddit, and the like have, or innovate with something cool and potentially very useful like reputation networks, the people that run this forum came up with one of the most bone-headed ways to "moderate" this place I've ever heard of.  It's something I would expect from the torrent/scene communities, but not from an above-board public forum.

Unfortunately, here I am, biting the bullet because I'd like to participate in the marketplace or maybe create some cool Bitcoin-based services and announce them on the forum, and I can't do that as a loln3wbz0r.

It's this or nuttin'.

[J.P. Larocque]

What other approaches have you tried or considered?  Would you like help implementing a better system for moderation?

[theymos]

As I've said, this is not the optimal solution. I just don't want to make the major modifications to SMF necessary for a really good moderation system. I have many more interesting projects to deal with. If someone else wants to donate their time to make the modifications, let me know.

Moderation is something I've thought a lot about, even before I was involved with Bitcoin.

I don't much like "universal" reputation systems like those of Slashot/Reddit, and I don't like any of the existing SMF reputation mods. WoT systems are good, and I really like FMS. However, since moderation is necessary anyway for legal reasons, and non-registered users will see the one "official stream" of posts, I tend to prefer centralized moderation for centralized sites.

My optimal design:

A new jr. moderator position is added with no moderation ability over established posters. Newbies can post freely, but their posts are subject to more strict moderation by the many jr. moderators. All newbie posts are additionally available on a single page for review by all members for moderation/reporting.

The reporting system also needs to be enhanced, and moderation needs to be made easier.

Some restrictions also need to be increased/reduced based on post count after these changes are made. Also, bans need to be improved, there should be a way to automatically ban based on certain behavior, there should be a separate ban appeal system, etc. If I had an unlimited amount of time, I would rewrite the forum software from scratch to support all of the features I would like.

[papa_snurf]

Due to a mass of trolling, only established posters are able to post in non-newbie sections. You are considered "established" if you have spent 4 hours online and have made 5 posts.

If you have really good posts, you can post a request for preemptive whitelisting in the appropriate topic.

Also:
- You must have made one post in order to send PMs.
- You need 10 posts to put a link in your signature.
- You need 50 posts to put an image in your signature.

Note that it may take up to 10 minutes for your PM or posting permissions to be granted.

I disagree w/ this policy so bad!!

[lostdroid]

Already has 18 post, yet still a Newbie

I guess you will be a newbie until you have 50 posts.

If its 50 posts then people will just post rubbish to get off the newbie list.  BTW, just like I'm doing here.

[ciore]

The fact that a newbie has to post a lot of rubbish in this topic just because has to be considered estabilished and post in the desired section is unresonable. Indeed I 've preferred not to post this obvious sentence.

[solovay]

Yes. these restrictions seem quite fair. i'm looking forward to getting out of the newbie ghetto, though.

[drfuzzy]

So this is the appropriate place to make posts to make up my quota? :-)

Random observation: people worried about the 51% attack should ask whether an organization with that much computing power wouldn't be better served by attacking some other currency, like the Australian Dollar?

[ProdigyL]

I guess they are quite fair. Time to start.

[BitcoinPorn]

Newbie restrictions are not that bad, I was out after a day I think.  Just don't fuck around and you'll be let loose to whatever forum you want to be in soon enough

[Violar]

Hm....    I'm not a spamer =)

Is there enough 5 posts to posting on not newbies forums?

[KKAtan]

I wanted to report a regression in Diapolo's patch, but I guess I have to spam a few posts here first before I can do this.

[edit]
Whoops, I didn't even realize that he had a thread in the newbie section as well. Heh.

[foolsrwe]

lol I can't believe I'm still a newbie, seems like the 4 hour counter is not ticking on. Darn

Anyways I am new to bitcoin mining and have just made my 1st coin. Now to figure out how to 'sell' it.

Read about bitmarket.eu or something like that, will give it a try.

[Technomage]

I think the restrictions are a good way to filter some spam from the forum. It now requires some effort to troll at least.