Newbie jail won't be brought back (impossible), but Whitelisting procedure might be considered and applied, with new staffs hired and allocated only Whitelist jobs to do. I quoted a post from a global moderator, hilariousandco, whom discussed about user first post's whitelisting, that likely is a best alternative for Newbie jail.
Due to huge size of bitcointalk.org forum, Whitelisting first post or posts is a very complicated task. If whitelisting goes active, there are some questions need to think of:
- Will we whitelist only first post or expanding it to few first posts, such as first 14 posts?
- Will we whitelist users' posts till they earn at least 1 merit?
- How many new staffs need to whitelist user's first post(s)?
I've suggested it before. It's one way for sure to stop all the messy bot spam.
This wouldn't be bringing back newbie jail. They can post. They just need to be whitelisted before it goes 'live' and most will be none the wiser to it.
Nice idea. Impossible to implement in reality. There's too many to handle.
It's not impossible to implement. Many forums have this sort of thing. I signed up to one yesterday which had it. I don't know how long it took to verify me as I got no notification just an alert that my account needed to be verified, but the irony is my account was instantly permabanned automatically when I made my first post as being suspected of being a bot. Had someone actually verified my post that probably wouldn't have happened.
Newbie jail was a reality when I joined. I think it should absolutely definitely make a comeback. It's automated, easy to understand and erases most problems. Lots of other forums have a similar system, but if it's not the owner's will then it won't happen.
This is more impossible as theymos said he won't be bringing it back. There are much better ways than newbie jail to curb spam and I think this suggestion is one of them.
That's the reason why such a feature won't ever be implemented. I've seen forums that do exactly what OP is suggesting, but they have far fewer members to deal with. I forget the figure, but bitcointalk has multiple millions of registered users with thousands of new ones registering every month. There's no way in hell mods would be able to approve posts.
In the past four months staff have been handling between 18-20k reports a month. White-listing a users first post probably wouldn't be a big deal. You could even do a trial run. Ie, the system is put in place but nothing actually changes on the user front and we see how long and how much time it would take to handle them and if a backlog quickly built up. As I already said, more staff could be added to meet demand as well. You could even have one or two staff who's sole job was to handle them. I'm not saying it's perfect and there are pros and cons to any spam measure, but at least this pretty much stops the bots nearly 100% from being an eyesore and infecting the forum.
Your idea completely destroys what a forum should be. Can you just imagine how could you practice free speech in a forum when all of your posts will be subject for approval? You simply can't! all your replies will be subject to the moderators reviewing it and it would really depend on whether or not its “relevant” for them. We don't really need to adjust to spammers and plagiarizers and affect everyone in the forum, they are the ones who need to adjust for us that's why we have a report button and bans in placed for them.
This isn't what is being suggested. A users first post only needs to be approved just to ensure they're not a spambot. Accounts wouldn't be banned or effected just for posting something a mod didn't like and staff could already remove it if they wanted but if they did they wouldn't be a mod for long.