UberGerbil wrote:It's hard to say how much of a workload increase it would be for the mods if every new forum member is required to ping them to get linking approval, and ultimately that's the key determinant of how viable this would be, but I don't think it would be the end of the world if new users had to wait a day or two to get that approval either -- and, like I said, it could be that new users would go on for quite a while before even realizing they're "limited" in this way.
Given the mouse-clicks and typing required to junk a post and ban the poster, a mod queue of new users seeking link authority with a single click from me would save me time every AM. The "grant link authority" cookie would have to be assigned to every mod though, so as to broaden the load (spending 30 minutes every morning approving new linkers vs. 30 minutes junking/banning is not a net gain IMO).