I might have been a bit too certain in my phrasing in the above post. Fixing registration will probably have no effect in my opinion. However, glancing at BWW the site's Bowie news-section appears to have been updated several times already this year (most of the "news" are worthless, but that's not the point) and in the MB there are 23 threads that have had replies today (so definately at least 23 new posts, probably more).

If you were a new fan (or even an old fan) looking for a Bowie MB without further knowledge that you'd be subjected to Dogz and claude if you register at BWW or Infidel if you register at TW, would you rather choose a regularly-updated website with a relatively active message board or a never-updated website with a near-dead message board? I'm not trying to make this into a TW versus BWW competition, I'm just trying to point out the problems we'd be facing. Because there is so little activity people are less likely to join, even if it were possible.

As a more general point of message board development, my impression is that there have been two divergent development paths recently. One is highly specialised forums with a clearly defined subject (much like TW) where strict rules are enforced and the discussion at least attempts to be very "professional" (much unlike TW). Then there are the "general discussion" type forums established by newspapers and the like where anything can be discussed and most posters tend to resemble Dogz.

Returning to the subject of this site, as an experiment I have allowed anonymous posting in the Come and buy My Toys forum to see how much (if any) spambots it will attract. If none are forthcoming in, say a weeks' time, I think it would be a good idea to consider enabling anon posting for other forums as well.

Trololololololololololololololololo