Best guess.
The system is set up so that persons who have nto yet reached level 5 have to have their comments approved. The site managers used to do all that, but I'd suspect it got to be too much to handle, so they decided to let responses be handled by the person making the post. The idea is to make it hard for haters to gain a foothold onto the site.

If any site managers reads this and i guessed right, it might also be good to give a person a point for approving or disapproving a comment.

I have faith the kinks will be ironed out

Eventually

Until then patience is a virtue.

I think @irascible is right. I don't know whether it's based on level or what, but I started seeing the approval button recently. I haven't seen anything I thought shouldn't be approved so far, but I figure if the admins would like us to lend a hand then I'm happy to do so.

Ive had a waiting on an approval, but nothing like you are saying. Im like you. Just a member.