Making the Forums Members-Only

In an effort to drive people joining the site, I am contemplating making the large part of the site viewable by registered members only. The exception to this would be Simopsis Related and a to-be-created guest forum.

I have, on numerous occasions, seen several guests online. These people never register. To check whether they just came across the site and leave or actually view things I will on occasion check what they are viewing. It appears they actually are viewing our forums, from CA's to TS3 discussions.

My question is do you think this is a good idea? Would you join a site that does this to look around, or would you just leave? I don't want to scare anyone off, or anger any potential-members, but people aren't registering. Part of that is because not much happens around here, yet, but this may be part of the problem.

Thoughts?

i never join sites that do that tbh.. i don't know if you or anyone else here would be the same. but really i think it would only drive people away because they can't see what the site has to offer.. and it just seems like the only reason for doing so would be to get more members which to me has very little effect on how successful a site is....

if you're concerned about how many people post and the amount of members, while it may seem as if you're shouting at a brick wall the best thing to do is to start plenty of threads to get a good amount of discussions started

I was hesitant on doing it for that reason. I asked because I wanted to see if that indeed would happen, turn people off. It's a little ironic, really. Shortly after I posed the question I discounted joining a site because it was members only. So you can guess that I won't be doing it after all.

Thanks!