Aside from this forum feeling like I'm stepping back to 2004 in structure (man, I remember building my own vBulletin board), it seems like this forum's safety measures have been... a bit... perhaps overdone. It really impedes my ability to have or engage in any active discussion and just drives me away.
In particular, I've made a few replies that should have made it blisteringly clear that I'm a real person with genuinely honest intentions, yet despite having multiple such replies approved recently, I still remain unable to post topics.
To add insult to injury, these posts are not even visible to me - I cannot find any place in the UI to view that I have even posted something that's pending. To me, it just disappears - which is mildly terrifying if I put a lot of work into something (that I absolutely won't want to rewrite).
As a retro hardware community, the vibe of vBulletin fits well, but I believe it could benefit from some adjustments that make the "newbie puragory" less rejective and cold for new users. Or maybe it's not a retro hardware community, and would benefit from considering newer platforms like Disqus or the like
The lovely catch-22 here is that my post here will, again, be stuck in purgatory until a mod comes by and sees it. And to you, I give my thanks for letting me at least say it out loud - but it's certainly awkward to have every post presented before one person's eyes before it's allowed to be read by the world.