The way you can only sign-up is by contacting a moderator is unprofessional and not right. The registration should be totally closed or totally opened.
Giving the reason “because a lot of alts are signing up” isn’t a valid reason because the benefits of having the registration open has a lot of more impacts than this one single negative point which is ppl having multiple accounts in forums . You can’t enlarge your community if you don’t allow them to be a part of it.
Going back to the thread topic, I hope Darlene does her job properly. It shouldn’t be a problem, From what I saw from the recent threads in the official forums, the moderation there looks alright.