Guest Chat!

I have just put in the option for people that are just looking at my forum to actually post! You do not have to register or anything! But you can only post in a certain section.
Check it out: http://chatgo.forumotion.com/f20-guest-chat

This option should really be in all forums.
Have any of you used it?
Yes or No?

Hmm... I actually prefer to force people to register, as guests can easily spam your forums without you having the ability to really punish them.

But I only have a small section available for them to chat on. Otherwise I can just delete their posts. No big deal.

You can always just IP ban the unruly guests, I suppose.

I personally don't like that idea. I used to be a member of a messageboard where you could sign in as a guest. This lead to a lot of posers, and it was just a downright mess. This was a celebrity message forum by the way, and we had people coming in posing as Aaron Carter, the Backstreet Boys, and the like. Not a good thing at all. This is why I prefer forums like this where you have to register in order to post. Slows down the posers and it helps big time.

Ashley wrote:I personally don't like that idea. I used to be a member of a messageboard where you could sign in as a guest. This lead to a lot of posers, and it was just a downright mess. This was a celebrity message forum by the way, and we had people coming in posing as Aaron Carter, the Backstreet Boys, and the like. Not a good thing at all. This is why I prefer forums like this where you have to register in order to post. Slows down the posers and it helps big time.

I agree. When you let guests post (even if it is just one part of the forum), you have a lot more internet trolls that come in to be "funny", and lots of spam results. If you force them to register you don't have to deal with near as much unneeded messages to clean up, and registering isn't too much of a hassle for the legitimate poster.

Mike wrote:

Ashley wrote:I personally don't like that idea. I used to be a member of a messageboard where you could sign in as a guest. This lead to a lot of posers, and it was just a downright mess. This was a celebrity message forum by the way, and we had people coming in posing as Aaron Carter, the Backstreet Boys, and the like. Not a good thing at all. This is why I prefer forums like this where you have to register in order to post. Slows down the posers and it helps big time.

I agree. When you let guests post (even if it is just one part of the forum), you have a lot more internet trolls that come in to be "funny", and lots of spam results. If you force them to register you don't have to deal with near as much unneeded messages to clean up, and registering isn't too much of a hassle for the legitimate poster.

Well, it's still a tad hard to stop spam even with a forum where you have to register in order to post, but it does cut down on it by a lot, especially now days that there's so many mods out there that help stop spam bots in their tracks. And it is a lot easier to report posts and clean up with an actual forum, that I can agree with.