i am curious to know whether the newbie rules have stopped any spam. i do not mind waiting a few hours (and a few posts) in order to report a bug with one of the mining apps. having a large aversion to spammers, i'd really like to know if this rule has resulted in effective spam reduction.
It has been very effective in stopping spam. There is no spam outside of the newbie-accessible sections. It's also fairly effective at deterring trolls, since "drive-by" trolling is eliminated (as well as drive-by contributing, unfortunately...), and getting banned means you have to go through the newbie process again.
how was the current threshold derived? has there always been a newbie "wait period" or was it added after-the-fact and the parameters tweaked? it's something i've suggested to a few other forums i've come across that have spam issues.