Guest posting - advantages and disadvantages

harishankar

What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing guests to post.

Do you think your forum activity will increase if you allow guests to post? Or is it too much of a moderation hassle to keep track of guest posters who indulge in spamming? How does it work?

Interestingly, most of the forums I visit have guest posting disabled, period. Do any of you allow guest posting in any of your forums? I myself have disabled guest posting. But would opening the forums for guests to post in encourage more activity?
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Dragonfire · Posted: 9/16/2005, 6:40 am Post subject:

I disabled guest posting mainly because if they're gonna be posting on my forums, they should sign up. Also, I plan on installing modifications that will be incentives for guests to register.

I might, however, create one board and make guest posting enabled there, in case they have any questions.

Patrick · Administrator

I have it disabled on all of my communities. Once in a while, there may be a valid reason for guest posting, but generally it just makes it easier for people to post garbage and when you run your community like I do mine, with guidelines and documentation, you need to be able to associate all violations of a specific user to a specific user, so that you can know when to take further action. Obviously people can sign up for multiple accounts, but you have to take it as it comes and requiring registration is the only way to be able to log all of "one" individuals activity on your community.

I don't really view allowing guest posting as something that will encourage so much good activity that it will outbalance the negatives.
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Keith · Posted: 9/16/2005, 9:58 am Post subject:

I have guest posting disabled too. If they want to post they should register. It's not like it takes long to do so.

Some forums would need to allow guest posting - for those who have pre-sales question about products and what not.
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chrispian · Posted: 9/16/2005, 1:38 pm Post subject:

Guest posting caused too much confusion on my forums. Most of the time the guest posts were people who forgot to log in, then when they saw their post as guest I would get emails asking if I could change it, or they would repost it under their name duplicating the post, or they would say "that was me, I wasn't logged in". I no longer let guest post. It's hard enough to make registered members accountable, much less guest!
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Triumvirate · Posted: 9/16/2005, 2:05 pm Post subject:

I have it disabled everywhere also, for the reasons mentioned by others.
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dojo · Posted: 9/17/2005, 11:08 am Post subject:

I have no guest posting privileges. The good thing would be maybe you'd get more posts with enabling gues posting. The bad thing .. a lot of posts could be crappy ones and spam. Registration is not hard and it's a sign they are interested in the boards and you can controll them better
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itunes66 · Posted: 9/17/2005, 2:32 pm Post subject:

disabled completely

Joakim · Posted: 9/18/2005, 12:29 pm Post subject:

Disabled at first, but changed it and it turned out to be pretty good. A few more posts turn up. If you like it on a forum you'll register even though you don't have to so if it's possible to moderate the forum with guests posting, I would say go for it !
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Elbethil · Posted: 9/20/2005, 7:24 pm Post subject:

I have guest posting disabled in all forums of my messageboard except the site development one (board support, guestbook, etc).
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