[About XDA developers] Domush:
The #1 method to cut down on crap posts to the development sections... explain WTF belongs in each section

without needing a click

(eg: informational box below the forum name).

I've been a member for a while and I still don't know the ins and outs as to what belongs where. It simply seems too generic to tell. I was recently yelled at for asking a question about theme development in the development section.. is that a development question or a theme and apps question? It was development related, but you see the grey area..

Add a description as to what is or isn't allowed (and links to where to post what isn't allowed) in each section, so people, especially newbies, can post a topic in the correct section with confidence.

I'd also suggest adding some more moderators to the ranks, specifically making 4-5 moderators PER phone and limit their abilities to that phone ONLY. Then we don't have some sections getting all rambunctious with rant posts and others getting over-cleaned, as it were.

Looking for volunteers? I'm game for the Fascinate forum, and I even have experience.

As for the minimum # of posts rule, I'm on the fence. I see the desired outcome, but some people post crap 200 posts into their membership and some highly talented people post only when really needed and may never exceed 10 posts. If you wish to keep the rule, consider making a moderator button which negates the 10 posts minimum for those they see as helpful and responsible people. This would especially be handy for those developers from others sites specifically invited to help out over here.

I think, as I have tried this before on a popular forum, you will find this will actually lead to many more garbage posts as a means to bypass the 10 post minimum rather than what you are hoping for. A perfect example is the ( 10 char ) text you see everywhere on here already.

What I think WILL work is a thumbs rating system which will hide, and eventually remove threads/posts. You've seen it used all over for comment sections,

and it works wonderfully

. Even craigslist uses it to great effect. It will take some time to tweak to a workable level for this specific board, but that can be done in the background, transparent to the users. The gist is to simply collapse threads/posts under a certain thumbs-down threshold, allowing for users to click to expand it for viewing. This allows the crap posts but with a minimum amount of intrusion into the general workings of this board. After a time period (eg: 7 days), these threads/posts can be auto-removed in the cron job or manually removed via moderator. This, beyond the obvious benefits, greatly improves the speed in which moderators can spot unpopular/unhelpful/SPAM posts and threads, which makes their job easier and this board cleaner for all.

To increase the length of an already long, but necessary, post.

Either remove "similar threads" item or limit it to threads within the same sub-forum.

I think that is nearly the worst implementation of that feature I've seen. Beyond being horribly inaccurate, it suggests threads for completely different phones, which is useless a vast majority of the time. People, when looking at the so-called "similar threads", see a bunch of unrelated topics and are emboldened to post their thread, thinking they are posting something entirely unique, because nothing in that list is remotely similar. I can guarantee that half-baked feature causes more duplicate threads than all other reasons combined.