When technology is involved, things get sloppier and inhuman on the large scale and that's exactly what happens when you make a fixed time and post count requirement for newbies.
It confuses them, pushes them to make meaningless posts to meet a quota, and creates an abusive and aggressive atmosphere that moderators are then left to clean up for the life of said member.
I don't know how others feel about this policy, but personally I think it's one of the most bizarre and backwards policies ever. We don't want trolls, we don't want spambots, and we don't want people who are here just to spread verbal diarrhea, yet that's exactly what we get when we place barriers that can be broken by a GreaseMonkey script.
I propose that the time and post requirements be removed for newbies and replaced with the following:
- Newbie accounts are created, along with a BTC address previously generated in bulk offline
- The balance of this address is controlled and owned by the forum and is used in place of donations
- When this balance reaches a certain threshold, the user will be automatically whitelisted and the balance dumped into the forum's funds, with the address removed from the profile of the user.
This makes it costly to make new accounts and shit-post or spam, and it also makes it so that people with abusive attitudes and nothing meaningful to say stay where they belong.
This would be the equivalent of using Reddit gold or the Reddit tip bot, but as a form of quality control and whitelisting instead.
Thoughts?
