It was one of the many changes made when we added the "New member" group a few years back.

--jeremy

How did this one slip through? First post, and the entire post is to promote the URL at the bottom.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...survey-871889/

Probably figured this out now, and I'm just guessing, but maybe because the initial post was in a section where the post would have counted in the postcount, it allowed the URL, and by moving it to 'general' the poster went to a count of 0 but the URL remained?

The policy I'm familiar with is that you can't post URLs until your second post. That account managed to include a URL in its first post.

My guess is that the students in question asked Jeremy to make an exception for them, and he did.

While there is still a pending bug that allows URL's through in an edge case, URL's are no longer outright blocked for a member with 0 posts. Any post by a member in the "New Member" group that contains a URL is now marked as moderated and must be manually approved by a moderator before being visible to other members.

--jeremy

I'm beginning to think that the "no links until your second post" policy is actually making spammers harder to spot. If they can't post their payload until their second post, then it's much more difficult to screen them out before their second post.

Case in point:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...7/#post4477301

*Highly* suspicious. But without the spam link or sig that probably was meant to be attached, we can't prove anything.

The "no links until your second post" policy is actually slightly different than it was previously. Members with 0 posts who try to post a URL now have their post moderated (meaning a mod needs to manually approve it before it appears to members who are not the OP) as opposed the rejected. The behavior you are seeing is consistent with spam attempt I'm seeing elsewhere, so I don't think it's specifically due to LQ policy (and that moderation rule catches a *huge* amount of spam which regular members do not have to contend with).

--jeremy