the need to hit 'reply' before being able to reply are both spambot prevention measures.
It is done so that a bot reading the board and trying to figure out the format required for a post fails at that stage.
That way, rather than preventative measures at the time of attempted posts, the traffic on the server is lessened also, which means less down time (another problem we were experiencing more and more before)
Im sure it is less troublesome than having to log in every time you visit the bb, which would have been another alternative.
Anyway, this software was specifically developed with the features we are using built in, so I didnt ask for them to be optional. FWIW, it was actually something Greg had been working on himself, with the developer, for some time.