why all the verification questions

[OK]

Total newbie here, just wrote a lengthy reply to a post only to have it completely erased because I had to request another image in the Verification section due to the letters in the first one being completely unreadable. Had to google the answer to the 2nd verification question .... very frustrated and won't bother writing out the whole thing again, out of time! Disappointing as I really wanted to reply :-( Let's see if this post ever gets posted cause the letters are pretty much unreadable again!

[Cromacster]

It keeps these out.



I don't know if it's just for your first post or what the cutoff is.  But it doesn't ask me to verify that I am not a robot.....suckers

[FiveSigmas]

In addition to trolls, it also helps deter spammers. This forum actually gets quite a bit of spam, although you don't normally see it thanks to the efforts of our ever-vigilant moderators. If there weren't the verification questions, I have to imagine that our moderators' jobs would be a lot tougher.