Do we need more public sections?

Do you want quality or quantity?

Nah! go for open door, you are always going to get lurkers. If they are that bothered they will register anyway and not post. Or use somebody elses login. I think I know who you mean but don't get paranoid.

Go public , whats to hide anyway ?

But I don't get it , I would not put anything on the internet I would not want the world to see . Why is a public forum worse than a closed one ?

Sorry vw, if it all goes public I'll stop posting, i may not know the members on here but feel more secure than in a open to any tosser group.

Groups on fakebook are no different to forums,youll always get argumentative trolls or folks using the access to spam others.
The point of closed groups though is the content posted is not visible to the general public or search engines.
Public groups and content are searchable and the content appears in search engines.
If people by a majority here want this forum to be wholly public so everyone can see every post thats perfectly fine but I wont be stopping here.

Most admin controls on forums have a setting to allow sub forums or thread section titles to be visible but not the content,which might let new arrivals see theres more to the site than two piblic sections but often the reason people use forums is to mingle with others they feel comfortable with and may become friends with and chat about some stuff some of which might be very personal experiences or health matters.
Ive had to move content from the general chat section that members have posted because its been very personal information and they may not have realised it can be seen by non members.
I think it makes people wary of posting threads or photos about their life if its inadvertently being accessible by the entire internet.
Its a violation of their privacy they probably dont want so wont post anything....which will make opening the forum up to a wider audience a completely pointless exercise.
But again i dont see why there needs to be a change to how it is, if people are interested theyll join and join in.
If theyre just joining to be nosey and then disappear again what have we gained?
Making threads visible will only encourage more of that but wont necessarily increase the post content.
'Dont fix what aint broke'

Totally agree with NC and corvus.
I haven't found a way to make titles but not content visible to the public, so the rest of the forum will stay private.
Also we are not here to provide content scraper bots with material.