The forum reputation is clean.
Sure, except for the part where scammers aren't banned--and they abound because of it.
If I were to give a recommendation to OP's friend, it would be to stick around for a while and figure out who's trustworthy and who isn't--and that's not even that easy, even with the DT system. Personally, it's only been experience with a small handful of members that's taught me who I can trust, and even then I don't trust anyone 100%. And if I were OP's friend, I wouldn't expect complete security or the ability to trust anyone 100% either.
It is not possible to remove 100% of all the scammers and shitposters without actually hurting the forums traffic by a significant amount.
Truth be told the first time I actually came on this forum back in 2012/13 was because I wanted to rant about Butterfly labs not shipping my shit.
Point being, people like to rant and complain, w/o scammers scamming, that'd be cut down a lot here. And if theymos really wanted to do any of that he'd have done it a long time ago.