Having been around when Miss K was messing with the preliminaries, I can say for sure that it was a measure to prevent review spamming, especially by bots. She DID plan to incorporate rotating images, but never quite got around to it.
We have a number of systems in place to attempt to prevent forum spamming but, as you can see, the occasional one is a bit more persistent and gets through. They are, of course, deleted as soon as possible and the user is blocked. Unlike the reviews, the Administrators all get copies of every forum post in their email, so we will catch the forum spams relatively quickly (unless it happens in the wee hours of the morning!).
While we're talking about reviews, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind our authors that, if you receive a flame, or a review that is less than constructive, let an Admin know immediately. DO NOT address a reviewer in your author's notes, regardless of the provocation, please?!
~~Wiccan~~