I am very new to these boards and I'm sorry that you find the inability to start threads to be enough of a turn-off to not participate. If you have been watching these boards as you say, I think you would have noticed many threads that you could have added your information to. And you could have hijacked or diverted many similar threads as well. Ultimately, as someone who maintains boards (for a gaming group), the ability of the admins to stop spammers, assholes and well-meaning fools who want to start redundant and/or obnoxious threads makes certain inconveniences a necessity.