Topic: Changes to newbie restrictions (Read 913 times)

I'm inclined to think that anyone who hits the Lending section within their first few weeks on the board is probably not going to be a "useful new member".  I'd definitely like to see people barred from starting threads in the Lending forum until they've been here at least a month and have a couple of hundred posts.

Exactly. These ideas won't completely stop scamming, but they will reduce those drive-by scammers (which I feel are the most common kind at the moment).

The good thing with the post count is that, even though it's easy to post garbage to boost it up, it gives lenders and buyers more posts to look at for content before committing. A member with 30 posts on off-topic/newbie type boards may just have those posts because he's new and doesn't know where else to post or how to contribute yet. A member with 200 posts on off-topic/newbie type boards is a lot more suspicious.

I agree entirely that the time requirement would help the most, but I could see the worry that it would discourage useful new members. It's a tricky balance to find, but I think a minimum of at least another hour would go a long way.

I like this idea but it's trivially easy to clock up hundreds of posts in a few days by shit-posting in Newbies/Off-Topic/Politics and Society/Speculation, so I'd like to see some time requirement added as well - and I think it should be a substantial one.

To be honest, I wonder if some of the forums shouldn't be invisible until certain benchmarks are reached.  At least that way people would have to put some effort into maintaining an account instead of just being able to open 5 newbie accounts and get them white-listed all at once.

Post count and duration of membership aren't everything - I could be a scammer for all any of you know - but at least we can discourage drive-by scammers.

I propose a programmatic autoban for anyone who uses the phrase "I am not a scammer" within the first 10 posts. They are always scammers. In fact, you should add that to your list of signs.

I agree. We really need to raise set some sort of threshold for newbies to post in the Marketplace section and its sub-sections.  I'm sick of adding to the list of suspected scammers which grows on a daily basis. My suggestion would be to limit access to Marketplace until you have at least 200 posts and for Lending at least 500 posts.

Muchas gracias!

I do agree that some first time scammers may not be as put-off by these ideas. But if they do successfully scam someone, I think they'll see that the reward didn't really match the effort, which will prevent repeat scammers from coming back again. There's still the chance that first-time scammers will give up during the wait, and it could also stop the scam before it happens if they don't have good post content to build trust with lenders.

Another point I forgot to mention is that it could help prevent the creation of sock-puppet accounts, since the scammer would have to keep up the requirements for two accounts at the same time.

Sounds reasonable enough, though I'm not sure how effective such measures would be.

bitcointip 21after2 +BTC0,005

It seems to me like there has been growing concern for lending and currency exchange scams from new members jumping straight out of the newbie section and into those forums. And from what I've seen, most of these scammers are repeat customers: they get a scammer tag, so they create a new account and try it again. This is a process that takes little effort to achieve with the current restrictions on new members. I have two ideas of changes that can be made that will increase the effort needed for scams without imposing a heavy burden on honest new members.

1: I think that the current requirements for new members to post outside of the Newbie forum could stand to be increased. Five posts and four hours of browsing the forum are easy things for scammers to accomplish. To that end, I propose the following changes:

• Changing the new member posting requirement from 5 posts to at least 10; possibly around 15-20.
• Changing the browsing hours from 4 hours to 5-6.

The posting requirement is the easiest change, as well as what I feel to be the most immediate need: five posts are incredibly easy to make. Increasing the requirement to 15-20 would not be a major annoyance to legitimate members. However, I believe the waiting hours have a bigger affect on scam reduction. Five posts can be done in ten minutes, but that still leaves a four hour wait that scammers may be too impatient to deal with. An increase of an hour or two wouldn't change things too badly, and it could be the extra step that turns a scammer away.

2: I also think that, whether hand-in-hand with the above changes or as alternative to them, the forum could implement posting requirements to access forum sections that are prone to scamming (lending in particular). An investment in the forum is a fair exchange to request loans from the members of the forum. My proposal:

• Implement a posting requirement of 100 to 150 posts to access high-risk forum sections.

I see two benefits to this kind of requirement. For one, it puts another step of time in the way of potential scammers. Even if it doesn't prevent a patient scammer from claiming a victim, it will strongly dissuade repeat scammers from creating new accounts and starting over from scratch. They probably will not see a return that's worth the effort; on another note, they may feel the need to pursue more expensive scams that are not as successful (i.e; asking for BTC10+, which lenders are wary of, instead of BTC1-3 scams that are usually more successful).

The second benefit is that it helps legitimate members build a stronger web of trust. A 100 post requirement gives the member more time to provide positive contributions to the forum and to gain a history of successful trades of goods or services. It also gives potential lenders more history to review before they commit to lending.

Edit: To add in a third benefit to this requirement: it could help prevent the creation of sock-puppet accounts used to build false trading histories.


I'm not claiming that these changes will completely prevent scams: dedicated scammers are going to jump through whatever hoops they have to. I do believe that these changes will reduce successful forum scams without turning away honest new members. And while I agree that forum members need to apply their own reasoning and common sense when it comes to trusting others, I also believe that we can better protect forum members in a non-intrusive way.