A system that is easily exploited, will be exploited. The point is to make exploiting it harder, rather than pointing fingers at those who are responsible for doing the exploitations.
If you are an honest newbie member who is either introduced to the forum or discover it on your own, will hard restrictions make you abandon the forum or would you try to push your way through a forum you are just getting to know?
I think most newbies will just abandon their accounts but alt accounts will be more persistent as they are familiar with the forum. We would essentially be creating a situation that restricts real new members and does not solve the problem.
That is how theymos sees it too-
Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. 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.
- Jay -