digger242j
Administrator
As of August 29, 2012, the "Probationary Member" status has changed.
As can be seen below, the "Probationary" step was mainly intended to prevent spammers from posting threads. What we found was that they'd make posts in existing threads anyway, so it wasn't really achieving its intended purpose, but it was making a lot of legitimate new members jump through unnecessary hoops to get to the required three posts.
That three post limit is no longer in effect. A new member should be able to start a thread with their first post.
The Probationary Member restrictions remain on Private Messages, Emails, posting of signatures and signature pictures, but those have never been the subject of any confusion or complaint that we're aware of.