"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.
Then you're rephrasing(unintentionally) what theymos already plans on doing or has just envisioned it:
What do the people who operate these bounties think of the newbie invasion? Also, people should not be required to post in order to get paid; that's already against the rules.
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.)
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.
It would reduce spam, people will come up with something else to make things here ,a virtual nightmare.
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.
And I wish you all the best luck for convincing theymos. Its not going to be easy, I can tell you that.