Despite the benefits of email verification, it has been disabled at my forum for most of its existence since I want the registrant posting as soon as possible.
That in mind, it is my experience that often times a person is motivated to register because of a discussion or even a particular post he read that he wants to — at this very moment — reply to. The quicker this person is able to begin typing up his reply, the more likely he is to remember everything he wanted to say, and how he wanted to say it.
Also, the more likely he is to post at all, since the more obstacles presented to the person on his way to posting, the more likely he is to be dissuaded from the affair. Even more, if he posts at all, the experience itself with maybe a few more replies before he leaves may influence his decision to come back again, or several times more, and become active.
In this regard, I am reminded of the tactic by fast food restaurants to prey on the tendency of people to make the split-second decision to buy something at their restaurant when they hit the intersection and were not intending to be a patron, but were around long enough to see something that caught their eye and motivated them enough to pull over to the parking lot, get out of the car, and dish out cash.
At this point, someone may wonder why care about someone whose potential activity is so tentative, but it is my understanding that this is the nature of guests: They are a tentative sort. Attention span is short, and must be gotten quickly. The registration process is something to be gotten out of the way, and an excessively burdensome or lengthy registration process may change the mind.
OK, but email activation is not so burdensome or lengthy in and of itself. Yeah, I agree. I do not mean to imply that email activation is this great dissuader of registrants. Indeed, as above, I only said I want to shorten the registration process as much as possible. That means anything that is in the way that may contribute to dissuading the registrant.
Few forums have a registration process so burdensome or lengthy that potential registrants disappear, or successful registration does not lead to the desired effect because the person to register has already forgotten ("Oh, yeah, I was going to activate my account, but forgot after waiting for it and having to leave to do something first") or changed his mind ("Meh, what I wanted to say was not that important").
Going back to that last point (i.e., the registrant changing his mind), I am reminded of the late comedian Mitch Hedberg, who said, "I got to write these jokes. So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny."
Yeah, few forums have a registration process so burdensome or lengthy that a notable amount of potential or new registrants are gone before they arrive, but this is a notable topic among forum administrators that has led to discussion about how to encourage new registrants while still effectively combating spam bots, as there is still notable benefit to be derived from streamlining the registration process.
Fortunately, I have not had to utilize member or administrator email confirmation for most of my forum's existence since it is so small that I can handle the spam bots on my own, but I can definitely understand its use by forum administrators who run large or even medium communities.
Relatedly, there are even small forum administrators who may struggle not out of incompetence, but for other reasons such as few easy-to-implement anti-spam measures provided by the forum software and its add-on community for anyone who is not a programmer. I am glad to have the benefit of several anti-spam add-ons for xenForo 1.1.1, such as the utilities provided by the owner of 8WayRun.com, "XenUtiles."
Note Of course, as someone who only owns a small forum that has never been anywhere near impressive in activity, I do not mean to suggest that I even have any idea what I am talking about, heh.
