I've been mentioned several times in this thread, but I had
other things to deal with so here's my late reply.
Damn, that's the worst type of thing to have to deal with. I hope he's feeling better soon.
I don't see limiting newbies' ability to post in the lending board as having a big affect on the forum.
It's not big, but it's also another step on a slippery slope. Every time I see someone argue for more restrictions, I appreciate theymos' hands-off approach more.
Believe me when I say that freedom is very important to me as well, which is why I love this forum so much. In general, I don't want to restrict newbies either, but there are other rules and restrictions that are largely in place to improve the quality of the forum, which is the intent of my suggestion.
If a newbie comes here only to request a loan and finds that he's incapable of posting a loan request, one of two things are likely to happen: He'll contribute to the forum until he is capable of posting his loan request, or he'll hit the road and never come back.
I fear a third option: they'll start posting anything they can until they qualify to use the Lending board.
That's kind of a non-issue, really. If they go about spamming the forum with low value posts, they aren't likely to rank up anyway. Case in point is user
16xypjnxlrew. After months of harassing lenders and spamming the lending board, he come to the conclusion that only people who've earned merit will qualify for a non-collateral loan. So, he ventured out into other areas of the forum with the intent of "contributing," but to this day hasn't earned a single merit. This is what the merit system is meant to prevent, and it's been working so far.
Probably would just be easier to
1) Leave them some negative feedback and encourage others to do the same.
2) Start a flag and encourage others to support it.
3) Add them to your ignore list
4) ~ in your trust list.
And then move on. Is it 100% proper use of flags and feedback. Perhaps not, but who cares.
This is the current status quo, and it's not great. Like LoyceV mentioned, it's essentially spamming the trust system with a bunch of red-tagged newbie accounts that are likely to be abandoned, a new one created, and the process just starts all over again.