Hi,
My experience with online forums (and offline ones too for that matter) is that you can't force people to contribute.
Unfortunately there will always be a percentage of people who will not contribute, but just silently benefit from the work of others without even so much as a note of thanks. When you remove their access they will simply go elsewhere - and you don't end up expanding the community at all. So instead of 1000 visitors with 30 contributors, all you get is 30 visitors and 30 contributors (OK maybe an extreme example but you get the idea).
I used to run a BBS about 10 years ago and found the same thing back then - it's a matter of human nature I suppose.
My advice is to be patient and keep working - you can build an online community, just by providing a reason to visit. The more reasons to visit, the more visitors you get. The more visitors you get, the more contributors. Und So Weiter...
In short: I highly recommend you reconsider this policy.
Another thing: If you do want to continue with this policy, I suggest changing the "you have no access" screen. It currently says that you have no access because you haven't registered. This is not quite right - even if you do register you won't necessarily get access to the information! I think this needs to be spelled out.
I found this site looking for information on how to get iSilo to work with a given site. I used the search feature on the site name, and got a link. The link sent me to the access denied page. This is mildly annoying - I was led to believe that by registering I would get access to the information I was after. This was not the case.
Bear in mind that I had no idea about the access restriction policy. It was only after digging around a bit that I found out about it.
Thanks anyway for a great site (the bits I can see of it anyway
