As a casual non-registered poster I too am still undecided about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Since the statistics on how many inappropriate, offtopic, offensive or spam messages ML receive as a percentage of total messages per day is only known to themselves (their signal-to-noise ratio), we can only go on their word that they need to tighten the screws on postings.
There are a number of other bulletin boards I'm a member of that have no such requirements to even provide a real name are subject to very little noise. Yet the Yahoo groups I'm a member of, which require some level of registration, suffer from more than enough spam.
I think these ML restrictions is just one more little wedge which will push modelling further and further towards an exclusionist hobby. I don't believe kids or teenagers are going to be bothered about wanting to register to join the 'inner circle' and whilst some folks here may not care, it's those who get gluey fingerprints all over their built-in-an-hour models who are the future of this hobby.
And I find it ironic that we're required to post with our full names yet those who run the boards and impose such changes feel sufficient to hide behind the "Missing-Lynx Team" moniker and not provide their real names. How about it, "Missing-Lynx Team"?
So I'm now decided, I think it's a bad thing. I hope I'm wrong, but until shown otherwise I think it's a case of ML saying 'we're doing it because we can'.
Steve Malikoff.
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