Require Minimum Number of Posts before Allowing Starting Topics

AR Husker Fan

AR Husker Fan

Team HuskerBoard
If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at THIS THREAD. Interesting idea - I can see both benefits and drawbacks to this. If we implemented it, I'd like to see the post count a lot lower, though - more along the lines of 5 or 10 posts. I think that would be a good balance.

As I mentioned in the thread, there's no pre-configured setting we can use. But I can see a couple of ways around it:

1. Edit the template for posting to check the member's post count and provide a pop-up or something to tell them that starting a topic is not allowed until they reach X number of posts.

2. Create a new user group and deny that group permission to create topics - call it, oh, I don't know - Newbs or something (Newbs is probably not a good idea), and set it to promote anyone in that group to Member status after X number of posts. This one, I think, would be the easiest to implement - haven't looked at it yet to be sure.

Anyway, thoughts?

 
I see the drawbacks of preventing new members from creating topics, but - especially over the last month - I see the benefits more.

I am on the fence about this. The n00bs are very annoying. But I have never seen a site that doesn't allow new members to start topics. I don't know that we want to do that here.

 
I think many new members hit 5 posts in the first 10 minutes??? Wouldn't that help eliminate these spammers from starting these crapola topics? $.02

GBR

 
I have seen some forums do this before - usually things like web dev or technical msg boards where people go there specifically to make threads to ask for help on whatever problem. I don't think I've ever seen it on any other kind of board (especially sports boards)...and even on the technical ones, it's a major annoyance, at least for me. I think we can rely on the strength of the existing HB community and our tendency to be very good at self-moderating. In any case, it's both unusual and an unnecessary hurdle for the majority of new users to cross. I think we should avoid it at all costs.

 
I posted into the thread in Board Feedback that while we can see the benefits, we think the negatives are too great and that we're leaving as is for now. NUance, who came up with the idea, has given it some thought and now thinks it's not a good idea.

 
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