Noob posting restrictions

Community Website and Forum
1

I've noticed sometimes irritable posts when a response from a new person is not quickly forthcoming.  People seem to jump to the conclusion that the OP has abandoned the thread.  Sometimes they do.  Sometimes life gets in the way.

Anyhow, I'm asking if it's possible to append to a noob's post a notation to the effect of 'noob_person is restricted from replying for X hours/days' , or 'noob_person blocked from responding until YY', or 'noob_person has used X of their Y replies for today'.

If it's possible is it reasonably doable?

2

Also, some new people are saying they cannot upload/attach images as they are too new.

If this is true, suggest this limitation be removed as it makes it very very difficult for volunteers to help the questioner.

3

Why does the restriction exist?

What behaviour is it targeting - and are there other ways to prevent this?

4

Lets guess ...............

To reduce spam posts

To prevent innapropriate images being posted

5

So limit the number of topics they can create or post on... but why would you limit them to x posts on their own topic? Which seems to be the main complaint.

6

I have seen, a couple of instances, that when they hit that limit they just create another account.

7

In the past we have had a lot of trouble with spam. As this is such a popular forum a link in here can boost its position in the event of a web search. And a lot of posts even in the same thread will amplify that effect. This is the main aim of spammers.

At first we tried targeting certain words like "marriage", "fortune telling" and "kitchens", which worked for a while but we soon had the problem back again. A spammer could post hundreds of links in a very short time and the moderators had a lot of work cleaning this up.

So they came up with restrictions on new members in terms of frequency and what they could post. Naturally you don't want to publicise these restrictions too much because it will help the spammers get round it.

Yes I agree that this can be frustrating for both genuine new users and members trying to help but it has stopped a lot of the spam.

Spammers still try and infiltrate our system. If you see a new post from a new member that seems totally unrelated to the thread I would urge you to flag it for the attention of moderates, as it could be a prelude to spam.

That is known as a "sock puppet" and normally produces a permanent ban from the forum.

8

I don't see why this would be necessary. Even if someone is not subject to restrictions, a day delay on responding to a forum post is perfectly normal and should not require any explanation.

It could be useful in the case where OP was permanently suspended for breaking forum rules though.

The restrictions are very well publicised. There has never been any intention to keep them secret.

You can learn all about them in this popular document on the Discourse website:

Every new user receives a "Greetings!" private message from @discobot that contains a link to that page.

They receive another private message from discobot when they are promoted to "Trust Level 1", which also contains that link

In fact, the problems discussed here can be avoided if the new user is aware of how the trust level system works. It is very quick and easy to fulfill the requirements to reach "Trust Level 1", after which all the new user restrictions are lifted.

So please, don't ever refrain from sharing that information out of fear that doing so would make life easier for spammers.

9

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