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Originally Posted by jggimi
That forum has an extremely strict rules set. It also has a customized vbb to enable an official warnings from moderators -- and a system to automatically suspend users who receive 3 warnings within a 30-day period. In addition, there's a five-day waiting period before new users can post. That structure was put in place to promote searching for answers and reading FAQs and HowTos, and for that ... it works well. But it doesn't prevent spam. Spam is an ongoing, never ending problem.
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Yes, we have access to a warning system that suspends users after so many warnings. As a matter of fact, jggimi, there is a little red button at the right of your post that I can press and you get a warning. Then I just have to go to the admin panel and decide how many warnings I want to give before you are history.
However, that is not the point. We do not want to have an extremely strict rule policy on these forums. We (Admins + moderators) do not want to be baby sitters in the sense that we do not want to put up barbed wire, machine guns, rabid dogs, and trolls to keep you from doing bad things. We would like the users to just use (in)common sense. If there is a user who is incapable of using common sense, we will gladly get rid of him.
When DaemonForums active membership becomes 140,000 people, we might then have to use very strict rules, but for now we are doing all right.
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Originally Posted by Sunnz
I think it would be good is new members need to be moderated before they can post... like give them a one day wait before they can post.
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As Carpetsmoker said, we are considering this.
Here is the bad thing about requiring a wait period before the first post:
It does not necessarily do anything whatsoever to stop spam. It does increase the chance that a new *BSD user will look into documentation before posting, but we must remember that this forum does not exist without inexperienced users. If we were all *BSD gurus there would be no reason for us to be be staring at one another over expensive vBulletin software.
Moderating the first post certainly would help the spam problem, but it is not a fix-all solution, and here is a problem with this method:
It is very easy for the comfortable, long standing members of the forum to have absolutely no qualms with the first post moderation method, but what about new users (a.k.a the life blood of these forums)? This means that we are requiring a new user, who has *BSD half installed on his shiny new laptop to wait until a moderator gets on and has the time to clear his first post before he can figure out why he can not get *BSD installed correctly. In the mean time, he has his new laptop plugged into the wall, with all of its fans blasting at 100% (No drivers installed). Sorry, but that can dampen someone's outlook on *BSD and is not particularly likely to increase *BSD use. Trust me... It happens.
However, I do like the first post moderation more than I do the waiting period. As long as we have active moderators (The whole reason DaemonForums exists), the new user should not have to wait long. We will wait and see how things play out a while longer. It is sad that we all ready have our first spammer, but it is far from a tidal wave of spam that calls for drastic measures. Remember, active moderators and administrators means things can change when needed. Everything does not have to be set into stone right away.