I don't think the newbies are the biggest problem currently. It's the masses of "seasoned" accounts spamming to get paid through their signature campaigns. I've already contacted a few of the signature managers highlighting a few members. Newbies are going to ask questions which have been asked before just like any other forum. If we prevent them from creating their own threads, like Foxpup said they would just ask it in an existing thread which could lead to topics becoming congested (if they aren't already) and off topic.
Regarding newbie jail, and the arguments to reopen it, I'm going to quote SaltySpitoon:
Ehh, I was a moderator luckily only for a few months with the whitelist system, and it was not fun. I remember going through newbie jail, I dont think it had a post requirement at the time, I just left Bitcointalk open for 4 hours and just went and did something else. I also delayed signing up for a few months, using a friends account because I didn't feel like going through newbie jail. People don't seem to realize that getting rid of newbie jail doesn't really change much, it just delays spammers/bots by 4 hours, so essentially after 4 hours of changing the newbie jail system, things would go back to normal. Anyway, report bots/spammers/account farmers if you see them. There are a few staff members who are really good at purging large numbers of spammers at once. Report one, and 20 will go away quickly.
