If it was to avoid spamming i could understand, perhaps to cut-down on the trolling, id understand but lets get real here this isn't doing any of that instead it is driving away the traffic that actually has something to contribute and/or have legitimate BTC related topics/questions to discuss.
Yeah, that's the unfortunate downside. We try to keep that to a minimum, though, through our
whitelist programI don't see why it is necessary for one to surf the site for 4+ hours in order to be able to open an topic outside of this area, If someones goal was seriously to troll, Couldn't they easily create and script that surfs the site continuously for 4-hours
It is surprisingly effective against trolls. Apparently, they don't like putting in too much effort to continue trolling after we ban them. (Note: some trolling is acceptable; we only ban excessive trolling) Also, the 4 hour restriction reduces the number of repeated topics that contribute nothing new to the conversation. Finally, it acts as a floodgate, allowing us to more easily maintain our forum culture. It's not a perfect system, but it's one of the most effective I've ever seen.