What if you never had to register?
I've never been a big fan of registration. It was a topic we always struggled with when I was at Tribe. Do we need a confirmation email on registration?
Here's a fascinating post that Topix made about removing registration entirely from their comments. Net is that they increased volumes of commenters and dropped their bad posts rate.
Here's a summary of the philosophy that they say comes from a Japanese site called Ni-Chan:
Registration keeps out good posters. People with lives will tend to ignore forums with a registration process. Registration lets in bad posters. Children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to go register an account and check their e-mail for the confirmation message. They will generally make your forum a waste of bandwidth. Registration attracts trolls. If someone is interested in destroying a forum, a registration process only adds to the excitement of a challenge. Trolls are not out to protect their own reputation. They seek to destroy other peoples' "reputation”. Anonymity counters vanity. On a forum where registration is required, or even where people give themselves names, a clique is developed of the elite users, and posts deal as much with who you are as what you are posting. On an anonymous forum, if you can't tell who posts what, logic will overrule vanity.
Good stuff.
