I've reviewed this thread and what I see is a complaint I've seen before: first time donors want to use PayPal.
I also saw someone ask: have there been chargebacks lately?
The answer is yes. PayPal sucks, to be blunt. We generally have good luck with it and it works fine, but we do have our issues. The reason for the join date and post count limits is to avoid scammers abusing it. People could join, post a bit, donate, and then use their donor status to scam people. They would then get banned and chargeback the donation causing a mess for us.
The official requirements for using PayPal to donate are:
1. Be a member for at least 15 days;
2. Have at least 100 posts; and
3. Have donated $0.01 or more in the past.
These requirements help us filter out scammers who would cause us a lot of trouble.
I realize this is inconvenient for new users, but I would like to point out our answer to this was the bond system. The bond system allows not only for first time users to donate easily, but for us to accept tons of extra donation methods we normally wouldn't.
At the same time, bond holders are volunteers. They are not obligated to have certain times online nor are they obligated to be online for a certain amount of time per day. They are providing users a service and can do as they please regarding their availability. They are also welcome to charge a fee or premium for the use of their service; after all, they are putting work into running a service and it's not unfair for them to make some money from it.
I hope this answers some questions and explains why the donation center is the way it is.
We continue to look for ways to improve the donations system and hope to continue making it easy for users to support Sythe.org.