I'm also a newbie. Reading this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177133.0  it seems to say that you also need to have participated, in a meaningful way, before some of the restrictions are lifted.

I don't know if you also need to make a request, or if it happens automatically.  I'm still limited although I've been on the board over 4 hours and have a post. I'm going to guess that my post wasn't significant enough for the moderators to think me not a troll.  LOL

I'm hopeful it'll sort itself out because I have some questions that I'd like to ask on some other threads.