New users can't post links until they make 2 posts and the account is 48 hours old.
The system will prune users who never logged in or never posted after their registration after a certain amount of time.
This lets you post a support request right away, but gives us time to check it out before we get clobbered with a ton of spam links.
How does it work?
New user accounts are slightly restricted to deny spammers a place to put a link.
These restrictions only apply to new users. They are removed automatically after your account meets certain criteria. Normal users will never be effected by these restrictions.
1. New users receive an error if they use off-site links in posts or signatures. New users can still link to a select set of white-list sites.
2. New users receive an error if they use certain forbidden words in posts or signatures. The error reports the trigger word to help you find and remove it.
3. New users receive an error if they enter non-English characters (like Cyrillic).
4. New users can't save a personal profile. Spammers like to put a URL in the personal profile.
5. Accounts that don't post within 48 hours of registration are automatically disabled and then purged. We get 100s of zombie spam registrations every day, an automated process cleans them out.
Who is a new user?
The above restrictions only apply to new users. We are constantly tweaking the definition of a new user to stop spam while not annoying real people. These restrictions currently apply to users who:
*Have less than 2 posts
*Registered in the last 48 hours
The restrictions are automatically removed once an account meets these criteria.
Users with 0 posts will be automatically blocked for certain common spam behaviors:
*Entering a profile
*Entering a signature with external links
*Entering in the first post
Help, I'm stuck
We apologize if you got caught in the filter. We'll keep tweaking it to find a good balance of usability.