It removes the incentive to lurk.
I lurk forums and post relatively infrequently, it's just what I do. Not only does this give me a much better overview of the forum's mentality and norms, but it also cuts the chance of me asking stupid questions that already have a thousand answers elsewhere.
I've been lurking unregistered on this forum for just over a month, it was rather patronizing to be lumped into the "Newbies" section for this.
On the other hand, if I had registered and asked a couple inane questions like "how do I mine with the normal client help guys" then I would have been accelerated to the status of a full member far faster - how counter-intuitive! Other forums I visit support what I am going to term 'lazy registration' (after the Functional Programming concept), in which you only register when you first want to post. The only disadvantage to this lazy registration is being seen as a newbie in the eyes of the populace, but that is hardly a problem with an easy solution and is often insignificant enough not to warrant addressing in the first place.
I think this system needs rethinking - what problem(s) does it address?
- Bot spam
- Bots can adapt to the system rather easily, maybe imitating someone with a shaky grasp on English with some word templates and markov chains.
- Captchas were designed to solve this problem, don't reinvent the wheel - you might find that your wheel is not as round as you first thought.
- Newbies asking incessant questions in the wrong sections
- They can and will and do still do this after they are removed from the newbies group.
- Warnings/bans and topic moves solves this problem rather well
- Something else?
It also looks like a lot of people think the same:
I'm not willing to lower the quality of my posts just to break out of newbie-land. I originally joined this board to PM a seller on the market board; I ended up spending my coins elsewhere.
... I also find this system very annoying. I have read this forum for quite some time ... and have had no reason to create an account here until now. I now need to pm one of the pool operators ...
I made an account just because I saw something interesting and wanted to reply. Guess I can't....
For someone who mostly lurks, the 5 posts requirement is a tough one.
And that those who don't think the same have rather flawed reasons:
... I guess it is needed to prevent spam and make some sort of filtering !
It's a pain in the ass, but at least it prevents heaps of spam accounts posting on the main forums
These points I addressed above.
Additionally, if you want some stone cold proof that people make unconstructive posts after being revoked of their newbie status, look no further than the posts immediately before and after mine.
Edit: One final point I would like to add is that to have all of your posts quarantined in a barely-read high-turnover forum without any categorization system whatsoever is insanity: what's the point in making a load of posts if nobody is going to read them?
Excellent thoughts.
