well, I'm outnumbered, but that's OK

I liked the guest posting usually, since I hate sites that require registration. Repeated guests were quickly found they had better feedback when posting as registered users.

Also, in the LW beta forum, experts from other platforms/clients sometimes used guest posting to drop quick and useful notes about how LW was behaving. I imagine they were subscribed to so many sites that the guest posting was a welcome courtesy to them.

As far as trolls are concerned, the usually went away hungry after providing us regulars with some amusement, so the past practise seemed to work pretty well (other than the flood this summer).

A sandbox for guests would be welcome, and/or enough nag screens listing rules and faq's/stickies to discourage repeated use of guestness.

If a guest had to click through 4 or so AGREE screens before getting to the text box, that would be useful to educate legitimate guests before posting, but would be irritating enough to encourage registration.

Cheers