Jerry, had you been a member a few years back, you would have seen some so called R/C boat manufacturers flooding the forums with single post sales ads for their so called products. For example, one of the boats was a so called "scale destroyer". A thread was started in the general, scale and electric boat forums, a practice that was repeated for multiple "offerings". It got so bad that the "powers that be" had to take action and the ten posts before being allowed to post pictures was adopted. This was the first of three actions taken. The so called manufacturers were also banned and all of the associated threads were removed from the forum. While the ten post rule is somewhat "inconvenient" for new members, it has significantly reduced the ad threads since the "manufacturers" can't just dump ads into the forums without being a member for a while and that removes their anonymity, something they don't want to lose.

I'm sorry if you feel this action was meant to drive prospective members away but, when you know the "why" behind the action taken, it does make sense.