What would be the feasibility of returning the newbie section to the forums, allowing Newbies to post there freely, and also allowing Newbies to post in other sections but requiring them to have their posts approved first?
+1. It will increase quality posts.
Forgetting about "the moderation team is going to die" for a second (I'm sure you could get a team of people to look over those posts anyway in exchange for that "Staff" title a few people crave so much), it seems feasible and it would increase the quality of posts.
Ofcourse. Many of them has started reporting spam to become a moderator/staff.
Make Newbies read and agree to a page that requires them to look at it for 60 seconds before continuing detailing criteria that posts on the Bitcoin Forum are expected to follow, etc.
It is nice but I don't think the user will read the details except some. Anyway, it is better to make that too.
How about an option for Full Members+ (or the equivalent) to be able to preview a newbie's post (like an optional toggle button). They could vote rather it adds or takes away from the topic. Eventually, once a newbie starts getting pretty decent amount of good quality post overall (outside the newbie board), they can post regularity ?
This would take quite a strain off the moderators as it'd be community driven.
To prevent abuse, a vote against the post counts a lot more than a vote FOR the post (the reason being, is if I were to create a 'smurf' or a 'new account' for myself, I'd just login to my main account and give a 'for the post' vote. Maybe need a quality ratio (at least 10 votes @ 80% approval) ?
It will also help Mods by reducing their works. If this is implementing, it needs to be done in 'Altcoin' board first. And also, the ratio shouldn't be shown/revealed. It must be a secret, IMO.
~~MZ~~