Thanks for the perspective.
I am mainly not happy with spammers, and mal-intentioned folks, but anyone joining and lurking is fine as a bottom line participant.
My vetting approach may well may be a carry over from a less than stellar anti spam system where it was often down to me to spot the good guys from a list of “unverifieds”!
So I will assume for the time being that Discourse will not allow New (spammers) in the pending tray, and as you say, for the time-being, a simple Please Introduce Yourself link in the Welcome Message may suffice for newcomers.
I have just migrated (well, Discourse Hosting just did a super job of migrating) 500 members, many of whom have not introduced themselves. I like the badge idea to mix it up a bit and prompt some action from them. Keep that one up my sleeve for later.
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