OK We've been tinkering with the forum rules and permissions...haha I said "tinkering" anyway the new rules and permissions are now in effect for newbies...if a new member signs up they first have to be approved by an admin before they can log in to the forum, we've had this for awhile but it gets better, stage two they are approved and go into the "newbies" usergroup which restricts them from posting in the "special" forums. They are restricted to posting only in Leisure World, Funnies, Testing Forum, The Welcome Room, and the information corner forums. They can also reply only in the news and concert forums. The rest of the forums they can see and read, well almost all of them
The newbies group is restriced from using the PM system and emailing forum members, they also have higher post time and search restrictions...so it's like 1 post every 45 seconds, and 1 search every 45 seconds.
Once a "newbie" reaches 20 posts they get auto promoted to the "members" group and have more relaxed permissions, and can use the PM system, etc. I figued it this way because if they don't get banned in the first 20 posts then they'll probably stick around for awhile.
So yeah it goes newbies, auto promote to members, manual promote to friends, each time you get more relaxed permissions and more features.