Ne0nx3r0

That's what the forum search facility is intended for, people can sign up, then use the search bar at the top, and even do some reading (i know, its a bit old fashioned) and would probably solve 99% of any problems without ever having to post!

Why make someone signup for a user account before you allow them to search for answers? You don't think they would get tired out from searching online first, and then finally sign up to ask a question? That's not even getting into the potential audience you waste by not drawing their queries this way. I suppose it does help your inactive user count though.

This method seems awfully converse to me, but it is your site.

as far as i am aware, this is intentional, and has always been like this. If people have a genuine interest in the project then they wont mind signing up, will they?

I agree people will sign up if they have an interest, but if they want an answer, being able to Google it is essential. Surely you understand this.

Well... forums are at all against SEO.

Forums are among the most indexed pages on the planet, and how most IT folks find their answers. This is a fundamental concept of web 2.0.

Besides issues will not be cut down. People usually are too lazy to search, thus search spiders will not help to any degree

Ha, I hope your moderators/admins will keep that in mind and remain patient when new users ask something that has been answered a dozen times over.

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I apologize, this was only a suggestion; apparently folks here are well aware of the implications of this forum configuration and have purposely set it up in such a way.

Maybe this is on purpose (I tried reading the forum policy, but it was ten pages long -.-), but I wanted to mention that most of your forums can't be read by guests.

This is terribly against SEO (and generally the concept of an open source community), and I think if you allowed guests/spiders/etc to view all, or most of the forums, it might cut down on issues people have.