Forum change - Allowing guests to view posts?

[PCEngineFX]

Question for my peeps - what is your opinion on allowing guests to view posts?

[Joe Redifer]

You mean they currently can't?

EDIT:  I just logged out and could still view posts as a guest.

[PCEngineFX]

Guests can view posts - I was asking opinions on if guests should be able to view posts or not.  I've noticed that a lot of sites these days require guests to register before viewing.

[nat]

I could see it going both ways.

On the one hand you might encourage more folks to sign up.

On the other hand you might discourage those just looking for some quick info. I know from personal experience if I'm searching online for some information on something and I come across a thread on a forum that requires you to register to view, more often than not I will not register unless it's something I'm interested in and intend to return to in the future for some reason.

I guess my question would be, is there some particular reason you'd like to disable it at this point?

[Joe Redifer]

OK I misunderstood.

We tried this at the-magicbox several years back, and basically the result was lots and lots of new members with a 0 post count.  Also it will prevent search engines from spidering the site, so it will come up in a lot less search engines when people Google (or whatever) a certain PC Engine related issue.

This site is one of the best I've seen so far in that we get a steady flow of new members, many of which actually post, and we don't get spam threads attempting to sell porn or viagra.

What forums do not allow guests to view?

[Keranu]

I'm definitely against the idea of not letting guests be able to view. How do they know they want to sign up if they can't see what it's like?

[PCEngineFX]

Thanks for the feedback guys.  I have always been toying with the idea of allowing/not-allowing guests to view posts.  I suppose it comes down to control...I like to see who is looking at the forums and making guests register would make the forums more private, but I agree that having the information "out there" for all to see is overall better than making it private.