New to the board, a bit confused about the newb requirement to post

[aaronwsanford]

Hi all,
I'm a long time lurker of the board and have been mining with an FPGA rig for the past couple years.  For the 1st time today I had a reason to actually register.  (There is an auction on the auction board I want to bid on / just pay the amount to "buy it now")  I find however that I need to make a post in the Newbies forum in order to be able to send a message to anyone.  To further complicate matters the guidelines I read indicate that this post must be substantive.  To me this is a tad unreasonable unless you want the newbies board littered with "Hi just posting to become a full member" type posts.  Because what is there to post about which could be described as substantive if one is just posting to fulfill the requirement.  I had to go with a meta-post questioning the reasoning behind the requirement but c'mon guys the main reason I'm glad to be 9 years out of college is to never have to write an essay again. 
Thanks,
Aaron

[nimda]

It's a very effective spam-prevention tool. Think of it as a "proof of work" for forum users.

[david64]

I think its too steep. I've had this account for some time, and possibly another before that, but have not used it much because I can only post here for the next 2 hours and 19 minutes of using this site 

[aaronwsanford]

Thanks for the replies.
I get the spam-prevention angle.  Waiting 4 hours to bid on an auction is a ball-breaker though.  I would think rate-limiting new users in terms of posts/messages per unit time would perhaps be as effective and wouldn't pollute the board with goofy posts. 

I've never been an admin of a message board though so I assume the issue has been considered by folks with more domain knowledge than I possess.

[semicycler]

I'm in the same situation.  Long time lurker but only now registered to get into a group buy.  Waiting for the 4-hour count down timer to expire before I can post to the thread.