+ 1, I support this proposal.
If all newbie members who apply for a loan end up with a negative trust, it is better to restrict posting to jrmember accounts, will greatly reduce spam.
If this is not possible, a warning message like what happens in the Investor-based games board will suffice.
It should be like the Investigations board where you need to be at least "Member" rank or above or buy a copper membership to see the Lending board. Besides, most lenders have merit requirements which automatically exclude newbies and junior members anyway.
I'm not supporting this out of the reason to prevent mindless arguments on the Lending board, as much as because newbies are technically shadowbanned from using the board for its intentional purpose (getting a loan). I feel differntly about currency exchange board, because escrow is always possible, whereas the purpose of a loan precludes the use of an escrow in the first place.
As much as I'd like to see more restrictions for Newbies, I think theymos has a point:
The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.
~snip~
Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. ~ When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.
In this case though, the only people who are flooding the lending board are not spammers, but indeed the demographic that theymos says will go through the trouble to join (scammers, get-rich-quickers, etc.), while it's true that not all scams will be stopped by hiding the Lending board, it will stop the majority of them.
Besides, a person should not join Bitcointalk solely for the purpose of getting a loan, and I'd imagine you'd agree with me on this one too.