These restrictions are really really annoying. There are other ways to combat spam. Such as preventing new users from posting working links, restricting signature permissions, preventing them from starting new threads in 99% of the forum, and preventing them to post in 10-20% of the forum are some good ideas. Doing a full forum lockdown, forces us to spam in *this* section and could potentially be impacting on the ability for many newcomers to contribute to the forums.

I agree, you need a good contribute to spam ratio, I just feel your current system could be improved and possibly follow the methods used by many other (and more popular and more spam targeted) forums.