I believe this features are great and helps to clean up the amount of spam one would have to go through and moderate, the only thing I don't like is the search feature which really should not be limited especially when you are trying to find posts of interest and you don't get it on the first search
Please MODS release the search from its padlocks
Very much agree.
Btw, you could just use google search and add "site:bitcointalk.org" in your search query.