And I lurked for a week. And nothing of value was lost.
A waiting period IS necessary actually. You need to lurk for a bit before just jumping in. It allows the new user time to pick up the 'flavor' of the place. It's the polite thing to do. kb is from a time before time, when there was no voting of posts, no moderation, just messageboards. This means he expects (As does most of hubski) a certain amount of etiquette from new users.
Here's the thing. It doesn't particularly scare ME because I'm relatively new to the site. I've only had to deal with 1, maybe 2 waves of 'reddit refugees.' Some of the veterans of the site have had to deal with DOZENS. The idea is that while yes, our current system is pretty good, we can always be improving, and especially improving the new user experience, and doing it in such a way that is mutually beneficial to the new user and the old guard. Am I making sense?
Well said. I feel that the structure of the site already does a good job of encouraging good discussion and content. I can understand the frustration of dealing with new users, but if we have any hope of this site building into a community beyond just the early and influential members, we need to think carefully about its policies and how to structure it. I definitely see kb's point, and I think that it's true that something should be done. It might be helpful to provide other filters, like only showing users who have received a circle'ing, or something like that. I'm just really hesitant to support anything that makes it harder for new users to be seen and heard.