Yes.
(There is also another motive, to make it more difficult for trolls and spammers, to save moderator time. When site activity goes below a certain level and when there is only one active mod left, and the mod has better things to do, this is not uncommon. We can be grateful that the site is left up, that takes a continual, though small, investment. It would be cheaper to create a full site archive and release it.)
As to the "PM Abd" trolling, that was a reference to a WR post, and I responded there.