I have been registered to hundreds of forums and have never experienced anything like this. First off I could not figure out where the reply buttons were at. Then I figured that there was some form of restrictions to new users so I had to go hunting for that information which was not put in plain site on the registration page. Now I am having to go through more hoops and perform tricks to please the powers that be. They are hurting themselves by making this difficult. Not surprisingly, this is almost exactly like bitcoin itself: hard as shit to get involved in. You have to first do a ton of research and spend hours and hours trying to figure out how everything works. And then when you do, your access is very limited until you have yet again spent many many hours and hours actually mining. I guess this community likes being difficult and making "newbies" go through a "learning phase" or some such mess. Whatever floats your boat man.

There are plenty of advocates for bitcoin that claim it will never be main stream acceptable until it is made easier to use. I agree. If you want people to do something, make it easy.