One nice thing about the on-week waiting period is that it encourages at least some minimal amount of lurking before a first post. There are some non-obvious c

One nice thing about the on-week waiting period is that it encourages at least some minimal amount of lurking before a first post. There are some non-obvious conventions on the site (such as not editorializing in a MetaFilter post or being relatively detailed in an Ask MetaFilter question) that more people would probably ignore if they could sign up and post within five minutes of joining. I know personally I spent a lot of the first week reading the site and answering AskMe questions, which I probably wouldn't have done if I could have just asked my first question right away.