Just a question on this rule;
You must have 10 (ten) posts and 7 (seven) days of membership before starting a thread within.

Some members have more than 10 postings, but a post count which is much less. In order to start a thread, do they need the official post count of 10 or more than 10 postings whether they are counted or not?

Thanks to Vince, I have found the answer! :)

For others who are interested in the answer:

Some forums on WHT do not increase a users visible post count, but are tallied up when determining if they have access to post in areas like the advertising forums.

Some members have had posts removed from thier count when we switched counting off in some additional forums some time ago. When the counters were reset, they showed less (mostly because of ad forum posting) but kept their previous posting priveleges so as not to "punish" them for this change in policy.