[Toucan42]

Wondering if anyone uses a free-to-post-without-registering forum on your board? I am considering this as a means of quickly building post counts but worry about the spam it will attract. On the other hand it might be just the thing to bring new *real* members onto my forum. Anyway ... anyone do this?

[Moelman]

I would never do anonymous posting unless I was running an imageboard. Its much harder to stop spam with no registrations and getting members should be one of the goals of running a forum, not just posts.

[Jolteon]

Originally Posted by Moelman

I would never do anonymous posting unless I was running an imageboard. Its much harder to stop spam with no registrations and getting members should be one of the goals of running a forum, not just posts.

I'm with this guy

[mh0825]

Make sure guests have a captcha or some spam question to answer in order to post.

Not sure it would work though. Most people think they have to register to post anyways. You would have to advertise it somehow on the site.

[Toucan42]

Thanks guys - this was how I was leaning, too - to not do it - but I was in a conversation with another forum owner who swears by it as a way of quickly building up the forum - what I saw on his board in the open forum was a bunch of link spam. If you look at the big boards, too, much of it is garbage. Thanks for the input.

[Frank]

Scary thought, and not sure if you would gain real members by it. Anyone who wants to be a member at a site and post doesn't refrain because they have to register for free, know what I mean?

[xm100]

I started not requiring registration to post but the spam was overwhelming.

The people who had something good to say nearly always registered anyway.

If you make it mandatory to register, and automatically subscribe them to the threads that they post in, you'll find the threads build faster and your post count raise.

The quality of posts will be so much better and the members will feel a sense of belonging... ahhh seriously!

[Exochat]

Dont do it... too much hassle than its worth.

I recommend making all boards and topics/posts viewable to guests and not hidden away but make it so that they have to register to post anything. This limits Spam, particularly if you set it up they have to activate an email link to validate and account. But allowing guests to view all posts will not only encourage more visitors to see what the forum is about, it means that those that DO register are more likely to be active quality members that have registered because they HAVE seen the forum and like it, rather than someone that is registering purely to have a nosy at whats hidden away from guests.

When i went from a closed forum to an open one for guests to browse, my registrations at first dropped about 30% to begin with, but then as more and more genuine and active members began to register and post a lot it in turn provided a lot of content turnover which led to more guests being interested in what they saw and registering. I would say that my registrations are now slightly higher as an open to view forum than they were as a closed one, and the quality of members has improved with far fewer lurkers and far more active members.

If you seriously do want to invite guests to post/spam then I would consider setting aside one single Guests forum for them to do it. Of which it will attract a lot of rubbish but also keep the rubbish away from the registered areas of the forum.

[Rambina]

In long term and in short term, it's bad idea.