One idea I had recently:

Maybe we should let guests post comments? Maybe only in the news/chart threads? Mods can still remove comments that are inappropriate. Might need one of those security / anti-bot "enter this word" pages to validate the content, before it appears? (i.e. appears after each post is entered, and before it appears - one attempt and the post is lost?)

(they definitely should not be able to post in the forum...)

I think this will not only attract more people to this site, but increase the "average time" they spend on the site. This in turn could boost the number of concurrent users online past 1500 or higher.

If it turns into a right royal mess, maybe have a dedicated section of the site where anyone can post anything? Or course illegal/anti-social comments can still be nuked.

...

Thoughts? 

Hrm, i dont know, i think if you make a passing comment your more likely just to have your say and head off, wheras if you are forced to become a member, then at the very least you are going to remember that you are a member of that forum. Ive made posts on forums before where i havent been a member and i couldnt tell you which forums they were but forums in which ive had to join to become a member, well i can list them off in order hehe.

Actually...guest posts on news doesn't sound like a bad idea. And if for some reason they really get out of hand, I guess ioi could just turn the feature off.

I'm not so sure. I think for a lot of people, it becomes like a type of ownership. Once they start posting, and can go back and reread their posts - they would spend more time there - see what people respond to them, etc.

Just like any other sort of community site - its the relationships you form with other people on the site that really matter - and draw you back time, and time again.

I personally would definitely spend more time on forums where I could post as a non-member, than ones where I couldn't post at all (same witrh voting, etc...). Sure once you become a member its different...

nah, most of the posts will be from current members to to troll/flame without using their usernames.

QFT, thats why we have accounts...

nah... It's not very hard to register and guest coment is perfect for trooling (use it+anonymous proxy like tor and you can flood at will).

Oh, yeah, based on the level of comments about vgchartz in other foruns, what you must do is to get a firewall with DDOS protection... I don't like when sites that I use to enter goes offline and there is A LOT of plp blamming vgchartz because they "are BS" and "it's vgchartz fault that NPD...", if someone out there uses a botnet...

guest post will be a perfect tool for those vgchartz-haters to flood like Indian tsunamis...

I see that you mean well with this idea, Shams...but I'm just not to supportive of it. Seems like it could lead to a lot of abuse, both by random guests and by the typical banned users. Imagine a world where a banned user could just keep posting comments as guest, but put his identity within the post. Seems like it could create a lot of undue stress for the mods.

We already have so much fanboyism... just imagine masses of fanboys waging flame wars, hijacking threads, and flooding the forum with posts. I imagine that it would become so much harder to wade through many of the threads than it already is.

 Shams is only suggesting letting them post in the news section...not the forums.