Non-registered users can reply - but are asked to sign up to save their reply

I postedthis on vbulletin.org, but I really think it's a good idea and am hoping it will get some attention here as well.

If this mod existed it would increase sign-up rates to forums significantly.

Here's the basic thought process:

• User comes to site via specific thread
• User clicks reply and is presented with the reply form
• When user click 'post' they are told to save their reply they need to register
• User registers and reply is posted (reply is posted after email confirmation if being used)

I thought of this while attending a talk on sign-up by Joshua Porter (wrote designing for social web) at Web 2.0 Expo

Heh! I attended that conference too while at 2.0 Expo. - I also went to his "Designing for Community" talk, both were very insightful and I really enjoyed them. Too bad we didn't get to meet over at Web 2.0, I guess we probably crossed paths a few times without even knowing it. Next time I'll post a notice to let everyone know when I (or any of the team members) will be attending an industry event, so that we can meetup!

Re: open posting
I've always thought this is something forums could do a lot better: reduce "friction" to sign-up by allowing some valuable (committing) activity before requiring registration.

Your idea is right on, and it's something we'll definitely be looking to offer (if the vB team doesn't add this as default functionality to 4.0).

I'm also brainstorming on other approaches that have the potential to lower, or even remove hurdles to sign-up. One thing I'm really looking at very closely is adding FacebookConnect integration to enable "non-signup" participation by guests, or even other options such as OpenID, Yahoo Profiles, G Profiles/OpenSocial, etc. - Very exciting stuff going on in this space. I'm hoping the vB team is keeping up with it all, especially now that vB4 will be a complete rewrite, it's a huge opportunity to capitalize on this stuff and put something really unique out there.

*Moved to vBSEO Feature Requests*

Ah - I was at his designing for community too. Damn, oh well. (did you go to best kept secrets for seo as well, my %20 post relates to that)

So I guess you know where I'm coming from with this idea. I can't remember the site he mentioned, but he said part of their signup process was saving information they already had entered and 'capturing' that signup.

Great to hear that some of this will be going into the latest version of vbSEO

Any new news on this?