As I am sick of spam and sick of eejits, how about we have a board for newbies and they have to earn their spurs before they can start a thread?

i.e. they could reply to a thread and trusted users could then thumb them up as trusted users, then, like on ebay, they get the ability to do more.

what do you reckon? might it perpetuate the in-club nature of the boards? might it confuse people and stop them feeling part of the community? is it too much of a barrier? how many thumbs up would someone need to be "safe"? should we allow thumbing down? is there potential for gang mentality to sink in and a new form of cyber bullying to emerge if there's thumbing down?

this is by no means a definite idea but having just waste more time deleting spam, it seems about time for something to change