Why do people have to log in to view the topics on the forum?

I'm not saying to let them post, but I don't understand why the forums are protected.

Seconded.

It is so we get more people to register. We need a user database, the only forums that do not require registrations is the Downloads Sections. It will stay that way until I really see a real need to change it, it is not that hard to fill out a few questions and click a link in a email. If they don't want to do that, they can use Google, then they will get redirected back to here, so in that case they should of taken the time in the first place to register.

Uh... you'd rather have lots of 0 post users?

Well, registered users may turn over into posting.

But letting the people get a sample of what we're talking about may also encourage them to join and post.

Hmm...that's is true, how about releasing the Leisure forums to be opened? or rather, Member's forum?

Alright, i have way to much spare time on my hands...
I just did the math (even guests can access the "members" tab).
Right now there are 16,778 registered members according to the front page, ~19,130 according to the members tab (difference probably being the validating accounts).
When viewing the users sorted by posts (50 on each page) :
-the first member with less than 10 posts is on page 5, meaning that less than 250 (1.3%) users have more than 10 posts (active members).
-the first member with less than 2 posts is on page 22, so less than 1100 (5.7%) people have posted more than once and ~ 850 of those have fewer than 10 posts (registered, asked one or two questions and that was it).
-from page 22 on to 37 there are 750 (3.9%) accounts listed with exactly one post (me being one of them).
-the first database entry with zero posts (read: registrations only for reading) is on page 37... of 383! So roughly 1850 (9.5%) users registered on the forum not only to lurk.
The other 347 pages (or ~17300 database entries) are filled with roughly 15000 (78%) validated accounts that never have posted a single line of text and 2350 (12.3%) accounts awaiting email validation.

The funny fact about this is, the only "thing" these 15000 accounts added in any way to the forum were their (probably fake spameater) email adresses (the unvalidated didnt even add those). So, quite an interesting user database, i guess.
Why would anybody seek that kind of "community participation"? *clueless*

Also, nice move making the FAQ thread public, but keep all the actual (linked) content private. Very subtle indeed.

That being said, RBO rocks and the boss tactics here are pretty neat. Why keep it under disclosure? The forum is linked from wikipedia, for gods sake! People coming from there usually seek for info, not want to add anything else.

Yea, we do realize that there are a lot of people who do not post. And a hell of a lot of validating accounts. It showing that there is not as big of a interest in RBO as there used to be. I know for sure that the forums starting over multiple times has something to do with it. Not much we can do about it. We also have used 16056.4 Gigabytes of bandwidth only for files downloads. So, I am sure people are hotlinking to our download ports and not linking back to the forums. Which is killing us as well.