I dunno... It seems to me like the site gets a pretty high volume of traffic already. The site's always sluggish for me too, and I just figured it's because there's usually about 600+ people on it every time I'm on. Not to mention that the trolling incidents may skyrocket with no accountability.

You give free liscence to people to troll, both guests and forum members. You also open the door for being raided by any number of other sites that aren't fond of VGchartz.

Terrible idea. Trolling would increase by like ten fold.

Anonymous Cowards never work that well.

Without a points system for comments it could turn out pretty badly.

NOTE: I'm not advocating that a points system should be implemented, I think it's fine as it is now. Simpler is better.

That idea should work in a perfect world, sadly this world is not the case. All VGC needs is a magazine. Imagine reading all the charts and analysis, round tables, comparisons, maybe some reviews, John lucas post(they are long as hell) while you're in the bathroom doing your organic duty. Sounds like win for me :D

Well there are a massive number of people joined to the site that barely post at all, must be 9000ish members but less than 1000 post more than once a week.

I think it could work, but there would be the problem of current user trolling. (what if Hus, Crucial and Blue3 come back?...or were they the same person, i was never sure)

I didn't read through this entire thread, but I think allowing guests to post would be a great idea. Just make sure they can only post replies, and not start new topics.

HOWEVER

I believe they should have to be approved first. As in, a moderator or administrator would have to log into the control panel (or however it is on these boards), and read through the posts to deem them acceptable.

That would be a heck of a lot of work, I know. That's where my next concept comes into play.

We'd probably have to appoint a few new moderators to help handle the extra load. I believe we'd get a pretty heavy mess of guest posts and it'd be too much of a workload for the current staff. I'd say, before enabling guest posts, we'd want to go with two new moderators to start with. Then, if it turns out we need more help, ioi can easily just appoint another moderator or two. Or three, however many it takes.

Sure, that means we'd have quite the staff here. However, think about it. Many people don't want to bother to register just to say something that happens to be on their mind. But, they still want to say something. Well, they see they've gotta register, and they decide, "Eh, it's no big deal. I don't need to say it." Then they never say it, they leave the site, and they never come back.

However, let's take it down Road B. This time around, that person comes in and wants to say something. They see that they can say it without bothering to register. So, they say it. Then, a day or two later, they get curious about what others may have said about their post. They come back, and they see that there were a few replies to what they said - including one reply that refuted the point they'd made. So, they decide to post again. This time, they decide maybe they actually SHOULD register, since they're coming back and all and getting involved in a fairly detailed discussion. Oh, and they click on a few ads and ioi gets paid big bucks for it too.

*cough.*

Point is, yes, it'll be a hassle. However, we can filter out all of the troll/spam posts by making all guest posts approval-only. And the extra hassle of doing that will be worth it because it ends up generating a greater degree of activity and traffic, which causes the site to grow even larger and more popular. Boiled down, there are a lot of things to be wary of when enabling guest posting, but done the right way, it can be a great blessing.

I think more focus should be placed on the server instead of this. I still get times where I time out and the page won't load. Was happening for at least an hour last night, I eventually gave up.

 Mr. Riley mayhaps?

j/k  We all know Blue and Gballzack have put aside their differences and decided to work together to hack the site.