We had a long discussion about this idea when the software upgraded to allow registration and being able to restrict certain boards. The Zone That Was had open boards and no registration. Well, that's not entirely true, there were some shadow boards that were invite only, such as the moderator board. Back then every board had a moderator and the Space Board had five. Worked fine in my opinion.

Pretty much everyone was in favor of isolating the community board. My feeling on the Flame Board was that it should remain open because many of the posts on Flame are moved there. So it would not be fair if an poster commented on a thread that was then moved to flame and they could not participate. Also, some of the very best conversations on the HZ have occurred on flame, despite the vitriol.

I haven't gone down to the boiler room to look at how the valves are set for years now. We had some problems with registration and I don't know how that is working now. The Space Board is supposed to be open to posting by non-registered (something I'd like to see) but I'm not sure that is working right either.

All of this is worth discussing from time to time. Now is as good a time as any. I'd like to open the Space Board to anyone, but that's me. Robert and I like community consensus on issues like this.