The 50 post rule was brought in to fight the mass spamming that was taking place by the mt.gix / btkoin / bitswing spammers. Limiting new users to a certain area of the forum gives us a chance to fight that spam before it ends up everywhere else. We are currently in discussion about the possibility of cleaning up the Newbie forum and tolerating one or two megathreads for people to get their post count up, but allowing real discussion to take place as well as the Newbie forum actually has a lot to offer. Hi philishere, If that were possible then the mass-spammers could simply register accounts every day, let them sit for a number of months then post anywhere they wish making the 50 post rule pointless to have in the first place and permitting the spammers to destroy the forum. If you have a suggestion on how we could better deal with this, feel free to put it out there. Suggestions on potential improvements are always welcome. Libertas