Double edged sword

I've been on Forums and BBS's since the internet HAD BBS's. I'm an active an avid member on DOZENS of forums on every topic from Motorcycles to Communications Networks, P2P, Graphical Design, Automotive repair and modification, Eyewear, Computing, Special Forces, Guns and Weapons, Video Games... you name it.

I have NEVER seen a more conflicting policy as I have seen here.

I must first register... standard
I CANNOT view attachments until I have 5 posts... random..
I try to reply to a post and am forced to read another post that tells me that I can't post "junk i.e. 'I need 5 posts'".. -- so I can't do anything without posts... yet I can't post until I have something worthwhile to say...
Now, the good one... Invite me to post saying "hi"... isn't that junk?

I've been taught never to bring a problem to the table without bringing a possible solution.

How about this suggestion: Allow me to view attachments, even download them... then I may have something worthwhile to comment on, or even add to the collective intellectual property of the forum.

I'm going to assume that this is going to either
A. go completely unnoticed as all people reading it are members with more than 5 posts and do not care, which is just fine and will result in me posting 4 other equally worthless posts to this one..
B. going to get me a warning which is going to annoy me and result in me never coming back.
C. going to get me banned which will severely anger me and result in me posting on every other cellphone, computing or tech forum to which I belong or MODERATE that this is NOT a good place to go for information, community or useful files or ideas.

If I've missed something obvious, I sincerely apologize in advance and please let me know.

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just try to calm down, take some time, and you should find some threads that you can answer or read, 5 post its not much of a work, just try to be patient and stop complaining about the forum rules, those are here for something, and seems they will be here for long, long time

Stoli, I understand where you are coming from. I've run this and many forums for a long time and have seen different types of posting behavior between every one of them. This one is a little different given the fact that there are files associated with the content.

From early on we were seeing people signing up, grabbing files and never coming back or otherwise contributing at all. At the time a 10 post rule was put in place. This immediately resulted in an increase in posting, but it was later realized that the additional junk that came along with it was not worth it. The feature was turned off.

A couple years later and many thousands of more visitors a day, the feature was turned back on, but this time requiring 5 posts before being able to download any files. It seems that although we still get people posting junk, it isn't as bad as with a 10 post requirement.

So in conclusion, this is what works for this site. Yeh, it may piss people off or be annoying at first, but they must realize that 5 posts is not a lot to trade for all the files on the site.