by sssmsm on Sun May 23, 2010 12:25 am
This is a good question and deserves discussion. If you want to believe that the forums are kept hidden from non-members solely to increase that number at the bottom of the index, by all means go ahead, but the real reason is to induce people to become part of the community before they even download.
r21freak was started as a place for people to post individual files, get good feedback, and constantly revise and repost. The site has come a long way since its founding, but I'm not sure if I want it to become a place where people just come to leech hordes of files and bandwidth and leave. Of course that is an extreme example, but I think that just having people register before downloading files is a good push in the direction of reviewing stuff and posting their own stuff.
Overall I just don't see what we would gain from opening the gates except more downtime. Though there is the rare counterexample, the people who are initially turned off from simply registering to get the files would most likely not contribute anything after downloading anyway.