A few people mentioned this in the other thread, so a vote is probably the best way to decide.

The upsides to requiring registration are obvious (increased privacy, etc). The downsides are:

  • The forums ability to email breaks periodically with no warning. Which means there are long periods where registration is effectively closed. Not a huge problem, but it does effectively close the forum completely.
  • If we hide the forum to non-registered users, this includes search engines. It means that eventually, you'll no longer be able to search TTH using Google (which is something I do a lot).
  • Following on from that, it also means people are much less likely to stumble upon the forum, basically closing off any chance of new registrations



What's the verdict?