Well clearly from your sig, you were the right one to ask about this. HAHA!

I don't mind some kind of forum rep system or whatever. You could even attach post limits to that. I can also understand stopping people from posting until they hit a certain level to keep down the spam... but yeah, I think their limitations go a tad bit too far.

GameFAQs (back before they were taken over... don't know if they still are like this) had a rep system, that I thought worked nicely. You had to make like 20 posts to get more access, and then kept building from there. Course this was like in 2002... so things have changed. OCN doesn't limit your posting, that I have found, but they do have a cool rep system for people to rate your posts and you gain "Flames" to show your status in the community.

But yeah, this whole system they have here does seem a bit archaic and unnecessary. If you can't afford to moderate the forums yourself, nominate regular users to have such privileges and permissions. Communities have a cool way of policing themselves if given the opportunity to do so.