I just noticed your newbies post.
That would do it.
Do you have stop forum spam enabled? That should alleviate the spammers.
Just fyi.
To moderate a forum not user.
Most people use say the preview group as the default group.
So they are moderated. Then they auto promote to say the user group.
without moderation.
Doing this in reverse for a user not forum is slightly difficult.
BTW did you check your postcount fields?
Looks like from your post the newbies post count of 10 is your issue.
I myself do not moderate by user but you may want to try the -1 setting for the preview group.
Since that setting actually deletes a permission not enable it.
