Quote Originally Posted by mcantar18c View Post
Not sure if this would be a direction we'd want to take here... not even sure if I like the idea myself... but this kinda popped into my mind...
Take the small leap into making COAR more of a club, and less of just a forum. People can read everything, but not post. Current members that meet requirements can be grandfathered in... not sure what those requirements would be though. Maybe 50 posts for members with positive feedback and 200 posts + 4 months for members that don't have any feedback?
Then if someone wants to join, they can either pay a membership fee (not too expensive, but enough that someone would have to want to be here to commit) or have a member in good standing "sponsor" them (for lack of a better term).

Seems like it would weed out a lot of the BS, make the mods' lives much easier, and make our experience here maybe a little bit better... not to mention eliminate the spammers. Then again, I'm undecided about if I really want this to become a private thing.
What do you guys think about this?

little long reaching IMO. This place became great for a reason. Sometimes it best to leave well enough alone.

What I think a lot of us, including myself, aren't seeing is what the mods deals with. I know the for sale section is the biggest issue because of the newbies not following rules. The only thing I was thinking was reducing the rules or at least the mod intervention, let the membership handle the newbies who don't follow the rules and the mods can step in when big issues come up, or they can just delete the ad right there on the spot and lock out the member from the for sale threads.
There is a lot to that though, whereas a minimum post count is much easier to enforce and deal with.