My request is to force newbies to obtain at least 1 Merit point to become junior member + you must be junior member or more to post in the bounties sub.
I'm all for some sort of restrictions because at the moment anyone is free to create an unlimited amount of accounts and most people who sign up here just to claim bounties probably do so with more than one. As InvoKing mentioned, these can also be botted rather easily especially when often all that is required is posting your username or adding it to a spreadsheet. Requiring some sort of merit achievement would go a long way in curbing this behaviour. I'm also still in favour of removing signatures completely unless you pay for them through more donator ranks, though I doubt this is something theymos would do. I think at least we could experiment with another donator rank or two though alongside being able to rank up 'naturally'. People are going to continue to buy accounts anyway and most of them these days get scammed in the process so why not let them safely buy the benefits of ranks from the forum instead? It stops account farming, scammers, and people just spamming the forum for activity and/or begging for merit.
I was newbie myself last year and for the first few weeks I did not even know what the bounties were.
Well you are most likely the anomaly. The sad fact of the matter is that probably 99% of people who sign up here these days do so just to earn from bounties and even worse signature campaigns. A huge proportion of these users probably have little to no interest or knowledge of bitcoin either other than they just heard from their classmate/cousin/granny that you can make good money here hence why they're often completely clueless.
What do the people who operate these bounties think of the newbie invasion?
They probably don't care. All most of them care about is getting their ICO's name out there in whatever manner they can as quickly as they can. As long as people are bumping their thread and wearing their signature it's all promotion.
An idea I had in this vein was that upon registration you'd have to pick one of two paths:
- "I want to discuss things"
= Banned from all money-making/spam-hotbed sections until Jr Member
- "I want to make money"
= Banned from the more serious sections until Jr Member
= You have to pass a quiz before posting which tries to inform you about basic forum rules, how not to get banned, maybe some basic English knowledge, etc. (Quizzes are pointless to stop dedicated spammers, since an answer key will quickly be compiled, but it may help in cases where clueless people are ending up here.)
Can't hurt to try something like this. At the very least, upon sign-up users should be required to read the rules and linked to some helpful guides like the Activity FAQ and how to earn here etc so it'll stop the same old questions being asked time and time again (and usually in the wrong section).