**sigh**

I tried to post a lengthy thread in the hardware section. I made all kinds of references to sites that helped me along the way to where I was at to clarify my situation. (Custom kernels yield special situations.) I cut&pasted my XF86Config and X-log into the post. I then submitted. I had more than twice the number of characters than was permitted.

Great.

So then I decided to upload my config and log to a public fileserver so that I can link to them in the post. Links are not permitted until after 5 posts.

**head hits desk**

Luckily, I backed up my post. It was pretty long.

But anyways, is this really necessary? Aren't the moderators able to ban naughty IP addresses and all posts associated with it?

Um, check out this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=346725

Heh, looks like I didn't have it as bad as the other guy.

I think the 5 post rule is very reasonable and maybe should be increased... It discourages one time add posts and spam...etc...

Plus if you really want to be a part of LQ then 5 posts is really nothing to overcome... sometimes I can do that in an hour...

KC

Yeah, I don't think it's a big deal to post five posts, but I think the fact that you need to do so before posting a link should be better advertised.

This is a good idea and it will help genuine members... Unfortunately one side effect of this is that if it is advertised in bold letters, spammers *may* start flooding the forums with nonsense just to get their post count to 5. And that's not a very good thing either.

The 5 post rule is intended as an obstacle to spammers, not as some sort of penalty against new members who just signed up. The reality (like it or not) of a website with the level of traffic LQ receives is that if anyone could post a URL with zero posts, the LQ forums would be soon be overrun with spam in no time flat, which would destroy the value of LQ entirely. As for whether moderators could "ban naughty IP addresses and all posts associated with it", the answer is probably "Well, maybe - as long as the LQ membership reported it", but it may also be worthwhile to mention that everyone at LQ, from the site admin (jeremy), to the moderators, to the most senior LQ members, to the newest LQ newbies, etc -- we are all just volunteers, trying to help out fellow Linux users in our spare time. In other words, LQ is not a full time job, and we cannot devote full time to patrolling the LQ forums. That's just the nature of a purely volunteer project.

As for your main question, granted, if a legitimate LQ'er signs up today and wants to post a URL in his/her very first post, the rule might negatively affect the post, but at the same time, the tradeoff is that it permits people to post a question here and actually get relevant answers, rather than "replies" such as "Get your Discount Meds here!!!!!!", "Free V14gra!!", etc, etc, etc. Overall, IMHO the 5 post minimum works to everyone's advantage, and is a key factor in LQ's success. Granted, it's a bummer if anyone is inconvienced by it, but at least from my point of view there is a legitimate reason for the rule. If the rule affected your ability to ask the original question, please post back, and welcome to LQ regardless. -- J.W.

There is nothing stopping any member from rwriting a url like this:
w w w.example.com

or

example.com

It's just the clickable links that are blocked.