I'm confused. I can certainly understand restricting new members to having made 10 new posts before they can post a link. Stops the spammers. But why restrict the newcomer to not being able to see links in other poster's signatures?

There is a great wealth of information located in a large number of Moderators' and regulars' signatures. To restrict the links in sigs makes it necessary for someone to have to post the links in the body of a reply. Many of these newcomers might find the answers to oft posted questions quicker by seeing these links instead of having to post and ask.

I imagine it's to encourage contribution to the community and less lurking. I thought it was a bit wierd too.

I do know that site admins and mods do this to devalue or eliminate the use of signatures in Search Engine Indexing, and thereby killing the abuse of signature back-linking for SEO purposes.

I'm checking on this... I am not so sure the purpose was to eliminate viewing links in sigs, that has not been our past practice. I do know the intended purpose to restrict posting links for new members until after 10 posts, to restrict spammers.

That's been my experience in other forums I've joined. Restricting posting type privileges until x amount of posts. I've never seen restriction of viewing content, except for various levels of paid membership.

Is this 10 post rule new? I thought sigs were once seen. I have less than 10 posts and know that I was getting help by using the search function and help was often said "see link in my sig" and I was able to click on it in the past. I don't really want/need to post since all my problems have been asked and answered so why start a new thread just to be told "go read it here". Others, like myself, are now at a disadvantage at not being able to see the links in sigs without starting or replying to random threads just to get post counts up.

Seems to me like now this will start a bunch more "I have this problem" and result in "been asked 100x before, go read "here, "here", and "here", but since the person would have less than 10 posts wouldn't be able to view the links.

Oops!

Agree. We have asked what happened/changed.

Meanwhile, check out our New Member's section and simply say HI or welcome to some new members.
New Members Forum - BlackBerryForums.com : Your Number One BlackBerry Community

This should be fixed now, that new users CAN view links.

If someone discovers otherwise, please advise.

10 posts says that you are a dedicated forum user, shows your dedication to the forum.

10 posts. Dedication. Right.

The thing I see with the 10 post rule is lots of meaningless posts. But I do agree it's a good rule anyway.

Thanks. Now can see links in sigs so that's helpful at least.

Yeah, 10 posts = dedication. Sure. So just thread crapping makes the world a more dedicated place. (note: read with joking tone)

So many of the helpful posts I used when I first joined and was starting out with my new device wee "see blah blah blah link in my sig". So that helped me at the time. Recently when it changed it meant people had to make random posts to get their post count up to read help. That's not dedication...that was hindering the support being offered.

Thanks for the change!

If I had already made 10 posts I wouldn't give a damn....

But I am running out of worthwhile things to type.

10 quality post is nothing for somebody who has something really good to share. I have seen some with "thousands" of post but their post is really nothing informative.. ha ha

To me, post count doesn't count or affect me. I think most get intimidated by it and post themselves away just to bump up their score... ha ha. If you can't view a link, answer some questions or do something else <--- sounds like a true moron!

It's been corrected; time to stop beating a dead horse.