I understand how it could be beneficial hiding those sections from new users, but I feel the definition of "new user" is a bit off. At the moment it's purely based on post count, but I'm sure there are plenty of lurkers like me who have not posted but have still been here for a decent amount of time (and have previously participated in buying/selling and group buys) - isn't there a way to take join date into account?
7 more to go for me.