Strange rule about links?

Hello! I was trying to post a few threads down in the resource section when I noticed a strange rule involving links within the site. According to the rule I have to wait one week after registering in order to post links to any site. Rather than just evade the rule and post it with a space I decided to instead ask here wether or not you meant to do this intentionally or not. I don't mind and can understand the point you are coming from when you made this rule, as to keep trolls and spammers off the forums, but knowing how simple it would be to evade it I was wondering if we could instead discuss it!


-Dawningstar

This feature targets bot spammers. The bots don't usually bypass this feature, because:

• This is not a very popular feature. Most of their target sites don't implement this.
  
• It is easy for someone to click a link and be directed to their site. But it is by far harder that someone will come, copy, paste, and remove the spaces in the link.

So why is it unlikely that a bot will bypass this measure? Because it makes business harder for them. People are lazy: I would probably never copy and paste a link and remove spaces just to see what it is about.

Now then, this feature is a good idea, but it has a flaw: bot spammers don't tend to post their links as soon as they register. They might register and remain silent for months and then suddenly attack (and this measure only checks for 1 week). Because of this flaw, it might not matter to keep or remove this feature. The best thing would be to prevent bot registrations in the first place (captcha).

Well, Omegas actually cleared things up for me, lol.

Botting was my main reason for this.
But, Omegas brings up a good point and really made me think about the rule as a whole.

I think I will bring this rule down for now and see how things go.

Thank you, I understand exactally what Omegas means... I had the same reservations about it for those same reasons as well, but I also understand how spammers work and I am glad that this rule is down, even if only temorarily!