It depends on whether you want to keep your forums small, or you wish to grow. If you want more and more members, then not letting guests to see your threads/posts is bad for SEO... And if guests can't see them, neither can bots who are crawling your site. There is no point forcing a user to register, a member will register if they like what they see. You've first got to get incoming traffic (guests), then you've got to to turn them guests into members, then you've got to try and keep them members regular posters.
In my opinion, if users cannot see what your board is about, why will/should they join?
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