How will they wear signatures if they can't access the bounties board.
"should be restricted from posting
outside the Bounties (Altcoins) section" is what I said. That means they can access the bounties board, but they cannot access any boards other than that if they wear a signature until they earn 10 Merits and reach Member rank.
We have a little bigger issue here, bots spreading malware, bots getting paid 1000$ for bumping ANN threads, and other things.
I know, and I never said anything about ignoring them, but that doesn't mean we should put aside another noticeable issue only because there are other issues. We can think of solving them all, one by one. And I have just suggested something that can be implemented for a change.
What you're suggesting here, has been suggested before, but with little tweaks to it. What they have said is, just remove the ability to wear signature for users under Member rank.
Either remove their ability to wear signature, or restrict them from posting if they wear them before a certain rank, both of these will probably reduce the spam to a very large extent.
But theymos wouldn't implement it, there are legitimate reasons to wear a signature:
I'm using the maximum length for a Newbie signature, and I wouldn't want to lose it.
As much as I hate spam, restricting legit users isn't the right solution. I'd like to see spam banned faster, especially the army of useless "great project" posters in the altcoin section.
We cannot leave 96% of the accounts to do whatever they want only because 4% of them are legitimate and doesn't deserve that. Besides, such legitimate users should not have any problems earning 10 Merits to get their restrictions lifted. It is not that difficult if you are actually legitimate and not here only for bounty hunting and you know the basic rules of the forum and posting.
I do not think you brainstormed your idea properly. If Jr. Member is wearing signature is not able to post outside signature then what happen to Jr. Member post that is posted without signature and afterward user start using signature. Would you delete those post then ?
No deletion is required. The posts in history of an account are not counted for a signature campaign. So a signature campaign would not pay a user for first posting and then wearing the signature later on. The posts he made would most likely disappear and no one would see them, and the primary purpose of running a signature campaign is to promote the project, not just to make it visible on an account for a while.
Actually I feel correct solution is to increase Merit requirement to 10 merits for Jr. and 50 for the member.
Whether they earn 10 Merits and become Jr. member and then join signature campaigns, or earn 10 Merits to become Member and do that, it is all the same. And I think 50 Merits to reach Member rank is a lot to ask.
I believe , spam should be discouraged from all ranks, though percentage of people in other ranks are less but why should we read anybody's spam post?
....a legendary which didn't get any merit so far is not any better than the new people coming in staying at 0 merit. So any restrictions should apply to everyone.
Restricting all ranks from wearing signature is also a good suggestion. If a user does not get at least 1 Merit from the last 30-50 posts he made, he should not be able to wear a signature. His signature should only be enabled again if he manages to earn 1 Merit, and then again if he doesn't earn 1 within that range, it should get disabled again.