When it comes to new members, how do you strike the balance between welcoming them and ensuring they earn their spot in your community? Do you have specific restrictions in place to encourage meaningful engagement or protect the forum from spammers and low-effort participation?

 

For example, maybe you:

• Restrict private messaging until a member reaches a minimum post count.
  
• Limit access to signature lines until they’ve been active for 90 days.
  
• Keep certain (sub)forums read-only until members prove themselves with valuable contributions.
  

What’s your approach? Do you think these kinds of restrictions help encourage quality participation, or do they risk alienating new users?

I have no new member restrictions set into place and I haven't seemed to have a problem with new members doing any disorderly conduct among the 2000+ members I have registered in my community. There has been a small handful of spammers, but you'll find that on any forum.

I was thinking of having new member restrictions on one of my forums, but I feel that they do more harm than good on forums these days. Why restrict a new member from doing the same things that a well established member can do? I get being cautious, but you can always keep an eye on the new members posts and determine if they're a troll or a spam bot.

I do not have 'restrictions' so to speak, but a promoted member group after x number of posts that gets some extras like profile banners etc.