Meta would need to be allowed for the ban appeals.
I've suggested something similar before. Newbies should be allowed in Beginners and Help as well. I really don't think lower ranks should be able to create threads in Politics and Society and Off Topic or maybe even post in there at all until they've hit a required rank because they're just breeding grounds for people who can't speak English very well or know nothing about bitcoin to spam a load of crap in there almost exclusively until they rank up. I know the merit system was implemented to stop this but there still should be restrictions on who can post what where to stop a certain amount of spam. The main Bitcoin sub is mostly unusable to discuss anything of value because it's just swamped by low value trash being constantly bumped to the top.