How do you feel about the practice of leaving a forum in Guests Must Log-In Mode?
Some people say they do this to protect their forum's content, to make it more difficult for people to plagiarize it for use on other forums. Some people do this simply to get people to register to view the board, either in hopes the person will stay, or to increase their forum's member count.
Others think that leaving a forum in guests must log-in mode is not the best thing to do. It is thought that if people want to steal content bad enough, all they have to do is register an account and steal away. Some people are of the opinion that a forum should show what they have to offer to guests, so that it may persuade them to join if they like what they see.
So what do you think about leaving a forum in guests must log-in mode?
I brought up this subject elsewhere but with "private forums" in mind and pretty much the answers will be mutual amongst everyone... it's a major turn-off in most cases because, naturally visitors want to see what a forum's about before they think about joining, especially to see if it's active or not. Sometimes, people would only join said forum if they know the person that owns it. Also, what's the point on advertising your forum if nobody can have full access to it? That's just like entering a shop withing being able to see what's in it.
I think it will get complex especially in your Google ranking (SEO). Search Engine Bot's need to crawl the contents of your threads.
Also, most of the users from Google.com that have searched your forum but then it required/asked them for registration, chances are they will immediately close your site. That potential user might be able to click some of your ads or share your threads on social media, only if you have allowed Guest to browse in your forum.
If I see this, I am NOT signing up to their forum. I feel like this is trickery to get people to sign up because they know thier content isn't attractive enough. If they have nothing to hide, their content will be visible. Usually when I sign up to a forum, I do so because I have a question, sometimes I end up staying. I usually check through the forum before signing up to see if that community is helpful. Kinda like what I did with this community.
I can absolutely understand someone having a member only section or two, but not the whole dang forum. I have this on SC, but guests don't even know that section exists at all until they sign up. In our case, it's not to protect the content, it's so that we can apply diciplinary action successfully to disruptive members. Our Current Events section has pretty much been the only part of the forum that attracts trolling and other nonsense because people get heated over politics and so on. I've removed people from that section temporarily too and made it so you have to be logged in to view it. Thats one valid reason.
Another good reason for having a member only section might be a resource sharing section. You might want members to have a particular postcount before they can download member provided resources. In this way, you're kinda forcing people to give something back to your forum before gaining from it.
I think it can be bad for SEO personally and the people can’t see the quality of discussions before joining (off putting?). However it’d work for things like resource forums where you offer something to give away. Encouraging them to join and post to access sounds sensible. For things like discussion forums, not so much in my opinion.
As a guest, I want to see the boards of the forum so I can evaluate if it is interesting to me. Whenever I would go to a forum that is locked for guests, I don't bother to register and exiting is my impulse. Some forums have some boards for the guests to see and some boards are hidden. Now, for the issue of plagiarism or copying of the contents, whether the contents are hidden to the guests or not, the copycat can do the copying, he will register if needed for that purpose.
I don't think this was ever a good idea, for that reason, even in the slightest.
But, if it's putting the forum in guest only mode to help to reduce server load, then that's another story.
A lot of these forum software solutions can't take the slightest bit of traffic, they fall over like a feather, and sometimes, admins do have to help deflect traffic to the most intensive parts.
However, as for me joining one? Uh, no.
Getting to me to join anything is a uphill climb, let alone, if the contents are secret. It just wouldn't happen.
And I'll let you in on a little secret. Google doesn't like sites which people immediately bounce from. They want people to click-through and to find what they want, that's the sole reason people use their service.
So, you're running the risk of getting penalized at some point for it, assuming you even have the slightest bit of search ranking with zero content visible to it.
