WTF is with pre-screening posts?

Questions to the mods please...

Why introduce pre-screening?

Has it improved the forum?

I am glad it was not there when I started, guilty until proved innocent.

i have this issue myself. why is that? I've been a member for a while now and dont wanna be a noob (my small whine).

What prompted all these changes?

For a while, Head-fi was being spammed with very nasty porn photos.  I've run a forum where new members had their first couple of posts pre-screened to prevent serious spam attacks.  As Head-fi is one of the larger forums on the internet, it is a constant spam target, so it wouldn't surprise me if pre-screening was going on, though 30+ posts is a quite a lot.  Possibly the forum doesn't have as good a system of auto-upgrading accounts at certain points as does VBulletin, resulting in a backlog of members who need to be upgraded.  I could be wrong, but someone such as jude will have to correct me on this.

Yeah it really shouldn't be done past the first post.  Pre-screening even the first post is a major PITA, especially because so many lurkers exist on such a forum.  It's only going to drive people away.  I hate posting on forums that screen posts, I typically never go back and don't post again.  if there's any issue with spam, they need better processes like CAPTCHA etc., this type of "solution" is covering up the symptom, not actually fighting the problem.

Having run a large forum myself, there isn't a magic way to solve spam problems. Most spammers can get around the conventional methods, such as CAPTCHAs etc.