In my opinion, your suggestion will not work at all, because I felt there are a lot of newbies and Jr. Member users who do not even understand that they should totally avoid creating multiples threads to discuss a similar topic, just take a look at the meta section now, it is just full of similar threads discussing the same topic on newbie account requiring 1 merit to promote to Jr. Member rank, is there really a need for every newbies to create a new thread in the first place just to discuss a similar topic?

The issue on multiple threads created by different newbies and Jr. member users have also been a big problem on the Chinese local board, I have put in a lot of my effort and time to explain to the Chinese users who are constantly posting on the Chinese local board, they should try their best not to create any more new threads to discuss on a similar topic, and they should instead just keep the discussion going on in one thread, the result is slow, but at least I am seeing some positive changes of posting behavior from some Chinese users.

I would usually sent a new thread to the Trashcan if it is just created again to discuss on a similar topic, one example of multiple spam threads on the Chinese local board in the past would be the analysis of the bitcoin price on the trading market, many Chinese users just seems to enjoy creating multiple threads to discuss on this topic, so I would have to take actions to send those threads to the Trashcan instead of deleting tons of users one line spam posts in those threads.

Quote from: d5000 on September 18, 2018, 10:06:00 PM

- But both Newbies and Jr. Members are given their signature space only "on probation". That means that if one of their posts is legitimately reported as spam and thus removed, they lose their signature space entirely until they rank up to Member.

If the whole thread is being sent to the trashcan by a moderator, every users posts on those threads will be remove too, and I believe we will see another flood of threads on the meta section again created by newbies and Jr. Member users asking why their profile signature is gone, another hot debate will surely starts, as they will try to explain that their posts is not spam, they should not deserve to lose their signature space.

I think the newly implemented newbie restrictions & requirements system is good at the moment, and it is really not that hard for a newbie user to get just 1 merit on their account, if the newbie user is able to create 10 posts that are of good content, I believe he should be able to get at least 1 merit from other users.