This same proposal came up several years ago and we had a full thread devoted to its Pros and Cons. Ultimately we decided to leave this forum open for public viewing for the following reasons:
1. Recruiting - new members are probably loathe to join blind. By giving them a chance to view the forum first, it gives them the information needed to decide whether they want to actively participate.
2. Self-Selection in participation - by allowing lurkers to just lurk, this saves me and Pixie a lot of needless work in registering members who then just go back to lurking.
3. Awareness - a closed board gives people a false sense of security and they are more likely to post information that shouldn't be disclosed. (Yes, TPTB, I know you guys are watching!) By keeping this section visible for public viewing, it reminds members not to post information that can't be shared with the public.
4. Convenience - more than one member mentioned they do browse the forum from their offices and would prefer not to login to view from their office computer.
In light of these above reasons, we ultimately decided to keep things the way it is now. Based on the inputs on this thread so far, I believe the reasons above are still valid and we should continue to leave this forum open for viewing.
ALJD
P.S. It's actually quite amusing to see this issue showing up again. Talk about things going in circles...
This is the link to the 2007 thread on this very topic started by ALJD:
aljdiscussion.proboards.com/thread/9/limit-viewing-registered-users