As someone who was new just a few weeks ago, I did a lot of reading before posting, and then I tried to start by posting to existing threads, because I felt that that was the right way to start.

Ergo, I think it is reasonable to request that newcomers begin by reading a lot of threads, and then by posting at least a handful of posts to existing threads before starting to post.

However, the error messages returned by the Flyertalk system are minimal -- when I can't get into OMNI, for instance (not that I necessarily WANT to get in) all it tells me is that I haven't got permission, but it doesn't tell me what I would need to do in order to get such permission (yes, I have figured it out by searching the archives).

For a complete newbie trying to post a reasonable question, if FT wants to prohibit that, it should at least return a fully informative error message explaining exactly what they need to do before posting.

Finally, I think the requirements should be fairly minimal -- maybe just that your FIRST posting cannot be to open a new thread, for instance. Really I would prefer to see a READING requirement, rather than a POSTING requirement. E.g. before beginning a new thread in any given forum, one must have read at least N (maybe 5?) other threads in that forum.

But I don't know if the software is set up to accomodate that.