Most commercial sites require the email thing, and in quite a few cases wont accept free email addresses. The thinking being something like, if l am offering this widget for vBulletin communities then people joining my forums will have a pop email from their community.

Having said that l actually joined here with my yahoo email account just in case l had to click the link.

Any of the free discussion sites l have run have had auto start posting, let's hear from you, away you go.

Depends on the site content imho.

I do it just because I have websites for alliances in a game. I want to keep track of who is in what usergroup so nobody can access anything private if they aren't supposed to access anything private.

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It annoys me so therefore I have turned it off on my forum. My forum is small so it is unneccessary. However, when it gets bigger, I will require it to avoid non-active members.

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I dont like forums that turn forced registration on either. I dont like having to register to see what is going on around the board, and to see if its worth it it register.

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