i just bought the discussion-forum 1.1. it’s hard for me to see, that unregistered persons are in no way able to post. on some other place here somebody suggested, that one can create an anonymous-account and tell all unregistered members to use this. this is neither elegant nor usable.

so my strong wish: allow the setting “can post” for guests. why not? who doesn’t want this still can turn it off.

sry it’s again me ...

just wanted to ask if this feature probably will be implemented, for it depends on this if i will be start the forum running ...

Non-members are unable to post to the forum and it is likely to remain that way in the EE Discussion Forum module.

may i ask why? is it a spam-prevention-cause?

for you see ... i want that everybody may read an entry and think, oh, a little discussion (like one of the biggest german blogs: http://www.heise.de) ... but with the need to register nobody will spontaneously post some entry. and as i weeped above: it would perhaps be no problem to make it default “guest-posting-no” and to turn it on/off according to your needs.

The reason we didn’t make it available as an option is because it would have added a big layer of complexity. User permissions, posts, stats, moderators, administrators, etc. are all associated with the member ID, so without an ID, tracking and associating becomes a major undertaking. There are also serious security concerns. The bottom line is that given the exceeding rarity of anonymous forums (most forum packages don’t have this option), the amount of development time, and the security concerns, it is unlikely this feature will be added.

I suppose you could have an “Anonymous Coward” user (à la Slashdot), publish the credentials on the web page and tell people who want to post anonymously to use that. Yes, it’s rather ugly.