[General Questions and Answers] ardosi:
In the thread here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1069298

The admins posed this challenge:

For lack of a better alternative. I challenge anyone to come up with a better alternative, and share it with us.

After goodness knows how much time under this username, and a bit under another (which I also didn't post with) I have to admit that now when I was finally ready to share something with the community (specific to the Motorola Photon) that I ran into this well intended, but somewhat counterproductive at times limit.

The admins acknowledge this:

We get that people might have experience from other fora and think this is a little over the top for them, but there are rarely any developers amongst the people that want to create new threads. There are a few people with a genuine need to post a thread in the developmental fora (developers), these people can contact a moderator to help them get sorted.

However, I have very little time and don't plan to find a mod, convince them I'm legit, etc just to share something that doesn't benefit me (harsh, but true). I make custom ROMs and other bits for my own private use as I device hop every couple of months and don't share them, really, ever because I don't want to support anything (or risk liability in any way). Sometimes I'll run other people's work (CM rocks), but more often I'll try to do something hybrid or unique. I'm using the time I would have spent posting trying to contribute to the community in another way, this message.

So... that's all just context for my suggestion answering the admin's challenge.

When doing a "can user post" check and determining posting has not already been verified do the following

Pull the account creation date, pick an age (say 6 months) and older for additional checking. Accounts younger than 6 months get rejected like everyone does now

Display a page stating "Determining eligibility" and force them to fill out a CAPTCHA of some sort

Pull the page, section or forum access logs. Since I don't know what is stored, I don't know what can be pulled. However, if User created his account 2 years ago and has accessed 4 main areas, and 6 subtopics he's probably not spam. Continue checking

Flag users somehow when they visit developer forums. If I have only visited a single device's development forum, even if the account is 2 years old, maybe additional checking is warranted, maybe not. If I've hit 3 or more devices in a measurable way in that 3 years though, chances are I'm not a noob

Based on some calculation of forums visited, decrease the amount of posts needed to gain dev forum posting access (or waive it altogehter)

Looping in data about files downloaded would be useful here too. In practical terms this means more site tracking of users, which raises space concerns. My recommendation is not to track every page, only increment a specific dev forum counter for number of unique pages visited, one for pages revisited (as if you are checking on updates for a ROM) and files downloaded

Based on the above, you should have a workable experience driven decrement system by which posting access can either be granted or made easier for users who are legitimately competent to post in the dev areas.

Also, I thought I should post these non-development specific reasons to post in the development forums:

- Adding money to a bounty (such as the bounty to get the Motorola Photon's GSM unlocked for US Domestic Towers)

- Providing output from something they were requested to by devs (error messages, radio versions, etc).

That's pretty much it, but both can be useful. Might not have gotten Galaxy Tabs in the US unlocked for Voice and Data without people posting dumps after all, as I recall (not that they worked all that well, or on all carriers, but hey).

I will try to make it back to xda in the next couple of days or weeks to answer any questions this thread might engender but my time and attention is spotty so no promises. Please don't flame me, or send me nasty PM's. Or any PM's really - I literally just read a PM from 6 years ago on another forum I frequent. I never think to check them. If you want to contact me in a way that doesn't involve XDA, use Twitter. I'm ardosi, obviously.

Hope this is a marginally useful suggestion and not overly long winded :)

---------- Post added at 01:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:38 AM ----------

I will add one more thing... the increment system should be over time. So, someone with a 2yr old account can't just visit a dozen forums in an evening and be able to post. It's the persistant, ongoing access to multiple forums, revisiting some of the same threads and regular downloads from the dev section that should be giving the indication that this is *probably* not someone who is clueless.

It's all risk management obviously, but with some devices having very little developer activity at all, it would be nice to lean a little bit more towards allowing additional posting.