It is friction. No matter how little you think it matters, adding friction always loses people. In this case, they're the old-hands types; if you think your project would benefit from losing those in favor of newbies, sure, you can make that choice.

Like I said, messing around with someone's email verification nonsense probably with a captcha and stupid questions on top is likely more than I want to spend on seeing if someone who might help me with a transient issue is even available, so I am unlikely to do so.