I'd really like to get access to the forum, but this system has it restricted.  This is mildly annoying.  I understand a need to block out spambots, but it seems like there have to be better ways, especially considering that people don't seem to really put into practice anything to distinguish them from spambots.  Most people have an initial post consisting of a variant of one of three or so messages.  This means that a spambot can easily emulate it.  Likewise, there is no reason to believe that a four-hour wait time would bother a spambot.  To a spambot time does not matter, there is no particular distinction between waiting four days and waiting 3 seconds to a spambot.  But to a person who wishes to fulfill a bounty or something this is a rather significant disadvantage.

Decent captchas work fairly well for a lot of things.  The type of message would be a much better filter than simply its presence.

But, the overall point is that there has to be a better way.

Yeah, that's a rather imperfect system.