Topic: Disable links for new accounts (Read 232 times)

I don't know what BitcoinSuprex is and im not accusing of scam or malware because I haven't clicked on the link or researched this, but let's say it is.

Shouldn't it be at least more difficult for someone to post a clickable url link?

the forum's mission to be as free as possible.

AFAIK the moderators restrict brand new accounts if they post suspicious link, the url of BitcoinSuprex doesn't look like suspicious link, that's why I think they allow it.

The sign will be like this and the link isn't clickable:

people really have some security awareness and report this kind of post

I support your idea, adding a couple of newbie restrictions will have the following effects;
The odds is in the side of the users to avoid clicking random links especially when it comes from newbies.

There are many restrictions imposed on newbies and adding more of them will force scammers to rank-up to reach the next rank, and so on, in return, new members will avoid this forum.
So the solution lies in awareness, avoid random clicking on the links and trying to report when you I saw such links.

Let's say moderators block all newbie accounts to post links, they will just write more crap posts until they will be able to post links, so in best case you would only delay posting of scam links.
It should be said again that scam is not moderated in forum, and this stance was clearly repeated several times, so I don't think anything will change regarding this.
More limitations would also hurt genuine new members, and I this is why I am against more strict restrictions.

Brand new accounts posting a clickable link with colourful and bold letters. I don't know what BitcoinSuprex is and im not accusing of scam or malware because I haven't clicked on the link or researched this, but let's say it is. Shouldn't it be at least more difficult for someone to post a clickable url link? This is common practice in other forums, and seems reasonable on a forum like this to be disabled until you have an higher rank than Newbie.

The topic moved to trash or deleted so I can not see what happened but I can assume it had links.
The only way you can help is to report it to the moderators.

Right, I don't care about making money from the forum personally. (I've actually thought about getting rid of the forum ads, since it's often a big headache and the forum has enough reserves for a long time, but operating at a significant loss while there's money basically just sitting on the table feels wrong, even if the level of loss is sustainable for quite a while.)

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.

It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

The low signal-to-noise is a real issue which seriously annoys me and is often on my mind. But as you mention, fixing it non-destructively is difficult.

Primarily, it's just that freedom + size = mess, and with bitcointalk.org I've chosen to keep freedom about as high as possible, for example allowing paid signature ads, poor English, micro-earning services which often attract a spammy crowd, etc. Banning these things (and other noise-generating factors) would be easily possible, and would immediately lead to a cleaner environment, but it'd also be a less free environment. IMO there are enough highly-controlled platforms around, and I'd prefer to try maximizing the freedom axis. (Maximizing freedom on the forum was a policy started by Satoshi when he was an admin, BTW, though it was years after he left before the forum became large enough for freedom to actually come in conflict with signal much.)

Bitcointalk.org is under active development on two parallel paths:

• First, although the outward appearance hasn't changed much at all since 2010, I have made tons of changes to the code, including many features. About a year ago for example I added the Merit system, which has improved signal-to-noise quite a bit, by means of changing incentives.
• Second, a completely new software platform has long been in development. This software is open source, can be run now, and an instance of it is available for example at https://www.cryptos-currencies.com/ . But I don't think that it's quite complete enough to migrate bitcointalk.org to it yet.

On both development paths, we try to tackle signal-vs-noise by methods such as categorizing posts better, improving incentives, trying to create smaller sub-communities, etc., but not via restriction, if at all possible.

While I don't claim to have nearly maximized the signal-to-noise which might be possible even given a high degree of freedom, bitcointalk.org is pretty anarchic, and it will always be so. (Though note that some sections are much better than others.) If that doesn't appeal to you, then you should use a different site. Smaller communities, like IRC channels and similar, can be both free and have a high signal-to-noise ratio. This was bitcointalk.org in 2010-2013, but it's now too large. You can also have large communities that are more strictly moderated, like r/Bitcoin.

We are already too harsh to newbies/jr members. Putting more restrictions will suck it more.

I've been seeing stuff like this around:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoinsupex-for-chrome-extension-5423058

It's usual aggressive promotion of a website/service where the user create same/similar thread on multiple boards. I've seen this kind of behavior at least once a week. I disagree about disabling link for new account/newbie, but people really have some security awareness and report this kind of post with note off-topic, spam or self-promotion on wrong board.