A blog site I'm on, livejournal (also run by a man named Brad- hmm) just instituted posting limits as the site got more popular and bandwidth issues got out of hand.
This is what they came up with:
If you are a free member, you can make 5 posts to your blog in a 24 hour period.
If you are a paid member (US$25/year), you can make 50 posts in a 24 hour period.
the concern was people using the site for malicious script-kiddy posts were most often "free" users, whereas anyone paying for access was prolly a legitimate user.
How that might work at SC:
new members would get 5 posts to forums per 24 hour period, and 10 comics per 24 hour period. This would perhaps cut down on some of the "manboobs" type noise posts, while not restricting legitimate discourse. most newbies tend to post mostly in RMDC only, anyway.
after you've been here a month, you can donate and have unlimited posts/comic creation. If you don't donate, you still get some kind of upgrade- ie, instead of 5 forum posts and 10 comics a day, you get 10 forum posts and 15 comics a day. a month later you get 15/20, etc.
Also, brad, I know you're a Canadian and therefore not used to being pushy like us Americans, but you need to be more diligent about seperating us from our cash. I donated once, probably about a year ago. There's no "membership" or other reminder to me that I need to donate again, so therefore, I'm prolly unlikely to. and since my donation isn't tied to a "membership", there's no personal incentive to give more (like if I don't donate $10 every 12 months, I lose the ability to delete comics, have a cool title under my name and have my comics at the top of the screen).
I think the above ideas would make SC better in the long run. it would also answer the ageold question of "when am I no longer a newbie"?
opinions?