quote:

I was thinking: What if a guest has trouble signing up, or a question about the forums before signing up? Some users may want to be 100% sure about certain things about the forum before signing up. I was thinking it may be a good idea to allow a sub-forum or a new section that allows guests to post questions.
When a kid who is little (About 8 and under, or maybe a little older) or a older person sees the AE forums, they may have to go to their parent to ask permission (If they are not independant enough or their parents don't allow them to because it's run by the same company) to sign up. If a parent has a particular question about the forums and it cannot be answered by anywere the adult looks, they can post in a specific (Easy to see) section that clearly states guests can post there. There, their question(s) can be answered or have a link leading to the answer. That way, less people would wander around in the dark :)

~Valo

quote:

There are certain problems when you allow Guests to post in forums. The first and biggest one, is the moderation problem: The possibility of being 100% anonymous to other users is not only dangerous, but unnecessary. While the idea of the board would be nice, the possibilities of it being used as a spam forum are too high. Then we would have the problem of punishing said guests, which would be another problem altogether.

Second, is the Terms and Agreements problem: A guest wouldn't need to agree with it (if he had, there would be no point in not making a forum account, as by my eyes the contract would be the only thing stopping someone from creating an account), so in technical terms, they can do things that while forbidden to certain users, would be allowed to them. Punishing Terms and Conditions violations would be troublesome, as stated above.

Third, the problem of the FAQs is being solved, as the Forum Rules and Resources section is being updated with more accurate posts and guides. Creating a board to counter the problem would only end up being a temporary solution, and as I said before, the cons of it would outweigh the pros in this case.

I understand your intention when suggesting this board, though the problems mentioned above make the implementation of such thing very unlikely, and I also don't think the situation you pointed as the main problems are so frequent to the point of requiring a board. While it is a well-intentioned suggestion, I don't see it being implemented due to the problems it could create.