Quote from: JetAid on November 02, 2018, 08:42:29 AM

I'd include juniors in the restriction as well. One merit is too easy to get.

The point is not to forbid any newbie to post links. Just to stem the massive amounts of spam.

Quote from: S_Therapist on November 02, 2018, 12:57:55 PM

Quote from: bob123 on November 02, 2018, 08:24:39 AM

scammy links to ICO's or whatsoever

If scam is the issue, why don't we restrict people to post ICO ANN here? Aren't they scamming more? Lots of new ICO is launched daily and people lose thousands of dollar.
I'm agreed with you but if you consider scam, restricting ICO ANN will be more effective.
Also, because of those ICO ANN thread, spams are increasing too.

ICO Announcements are in a sperate sub. If people decide to browse that sub, they decide to see this spammy rubbish.

I didn't want to suggest restricting what people are allowing to post. Just spammy ICO shit in all the other subs (e.g. technical support, bumping 2 year old threads).

Quote from: kenzawak on November 02, 2018, 01:48:44 PM

The issue would be all the people who became copper members in order to participate to bounties. If you include them, they won't be able to post their weekly reports (facebook links, twitter links...)

I, personally, wouldn't include them because those spambots are creating standard accounts (non-copper) for spamming.
Those people aren't THAT retarded, to pay for creating an account simply to have their link displayed somewhere for 10 minutes.

I'd assume that copper members aren't just created to spam 1 link and leave.

Quote from: virendarnagpal on November 02, 2018, 02:44:33 PM

One question which comes to my mind is whether only juniors are scammers? And what if the scammer is senior member?

If Junior Members are banned for signature then It will motivate members like me to rank up. So at one point of time it will be beneficial to us though it tastes bitter presently.
I agree S_Therapist why not ban ICOs? because lots of people are being cheated via ICO scams.

Of course not only jr. are scammer.

What i have said is that i would restrict newbies from posting URL's.

Quote from: Blanca_Gregory on November 02, 2018, 06:27:58 PM

If spam is the issue, then why not ban the website they're linking it to? Or, if they're doing it repeatedly, then just ban them altogether? No better way to keep the forum out of spammers than to filter and restrict their posts and/or ban them from the forum, right?

Probably because there are multiple new websites created daily which are then spammed here across unrelated threads.
I think it would be way more effort to ban each site, than to simply restrict newbies from posting URL's. But both is a good approach.

Quote from: pugman on November 02, 2018, 11:21:55 PM

Do you mean to make the links posted by newbies unclickable? Or for the forum to just wipe out any link that newbies post? Either way, both of them have their pros and cons, and a copper membership could solve the problems for newbies. But I could only see this happening if the issue of newbies spamming URLs on a VERY LARGE SCALE.

Not only unclickable, but also removed. Like it is happening with suspicious links (www.[suspicious link removed].com etc.), just for every URL from newbies.
IMO this spam is getting out of control.

A few days ago i had to report at least 10 of such spams, which were bumping year old threads.

Quote from: gawer33 on November 03, 2018, 02:58:28 AM

I disagree sometimes newbies need to post a link for scam accusations or account reactivation for ban appeals. Implementing this will only give scammers more opportunities to scam newbies thus they cannot even provide links.

Exceptions can be made (e.g. scam accusation). This wouldn't hurt the idea, i believe.

Quote from: Bitcoin_Arena on November 03, 2018, 03:40:40 AM

Far too extreme for a newbie. Not every newbie is a bot and looking to share shady and scammy links. Some newbies are genuine and looking to grow with the community as they learn and if you impose such it simply means new members are not welcome.
How will a newbie able to post from an external source if they not able to share a link of my source? won't it earn them an automatic ban for "plagiarism''?

Sometimes a newbie may need to ask for Help/support with reference to Links or Some other Newbie may be willing to help with reference using a link but can not do so because they can't post links. Now how does that help the community to grow?
Much as we need to get rid of Newbie bots, we should also consider that there are genuine newbies.

It's not that hard to receive 1 merit.
So, if people are really willing to learn etc.. they also will earn 1 merit.

And it shouldn't hurt to wait with posting links until then.

Beginners- / Spam accusation- subs could be excluded from this rule, maybe.

Quote from: Quickseller on November 03, 2018, 04:17:01 AM

This is easier said than done. Spammers would just post bitcointalk dot org instead of a actual link and search engines would still pick up the text of the link. The underlying reason why these spammers post these links isnt to get forum users to click on them, it is to get search engines to recognize that bitcointalk has the link displayed on one (many) of its pages which helps the search engine rankings for the link.

Wouldn't this already be way less effective in terms of SEO ?