I had troubles with two things when I tried to register in this forum:
1) coming up with a password containing mixed case and digits that I would not forget immediately.
2) solving the captcha, I think I needed 5 tries. (At least I didn't have to re-type my password each time, like they make you do on some other sites)
I suggest you remove the password security requirements because account security is not crucial for this site (and what's the point with having a secure password to this site when your e-mail password is not?), and that you use reCAPTCHA (http://recaptcha.net/) instead, which many people are familiar with, gives the user some slack, and has not been hacked AFAIK. Otherwise you might lose potential members (I tried to join 3 months ago, but gave up because I didn't have a secure password. If there were no restrictions, I would have used my lowest-security password, and I believe that decision should have been mine to take.).
Also, I think you should only have one level of forums (i.e. merge The Knowledge Bank into the Public Area), with the forums listed in decreasing order of interest for the general public:
Questions (The Study Hall)
Debates (The Reactor Core)
Publications (The Peer Review, Powerful News)
Other (The Deep Repository, The Workshop, Requests, Feedback & Questions)
Perhaps some forums should be merged too, as e.g. questions easily turn into debates.