There’s nothing I hate more than being told to sign up for something.  I don’t mind being asked, like if I want to comment on the world’s first and foremost forum for discussion of stamp collecting, but being told I have to register for something (or anything, really) just for the pleasure of looking at what others have written?  No thanks.  I’m a try before you buy type of dude, and if I sign up for a forum, it’s going to be one I know I’m going to participate in.  That’s why I’m going to lean heavily on these 3 ways to access protected websites.

I understand the reason why people do this.  They want to make people sign up for their forums so they can point to said forum and say, “Hey, we’ve got a forum with over (insert number) users signed up!”  It looks great from a marketing standpoint.

User-only forums is a great way to keep the trolls at bay, as well.  Someone causes problems?  Crush them with the banhammer.  Viola, civil forums.  It’s not as messy as blocking someone’s IP address, everyone knows who the banned party is and why they got banned, and there’s a greater ability to control sock puppet creation thanks to the whole process being a huge hassle.

When I’ve had forums, I’ve made people sign up to post, but I never made them sign up to read.  Why?  Simple:  I’d rather have a forum with a dozen active users than a thousand inactive users.  Artificially-inflated numbers don’t make me feel better about my work, unless they’re on a paycheck.

Tags: bug me not, bypassing sign-ups, spam, avoiding spam, google cache, hacks, be the bot

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