I received a question in my "mailbag" recently, so I'd like to post the answer here as well:

Lurkers/guests can't view or download any attachments to posts.

So if someone attaches a PDF, ZIP file, MP3, sermon, picture, or anything else, you won't be able to even see that there's an attachment there, let alone download it.

Besides the obvious fact that Guests can't vote on any posts, they also can't see the votes (thumbs-up/thumbs-down) for each post. They are also limited to viewing 3 posts per page instead of 5. They can't view much about the "active users" either -- it cuts them off after the first 10. And I don't think that's even the end of the restrictions.

Membership has its benefits.

Even if a person signed up with a freshly created (and nondescript) Gmail account, picked a very anonymous-sounding user name, and said nothing at all about himself personally -- he'd still be far preferable to a GUEST, who could be anything from an ex-member, a person coming in from Google, to a hacker or a spam-bot from China. To speak frankly, there is nothing lower than a Guest. And there are so many of them! That's why I'm so "restrictive" with the permissions I give them.

Especially since I make it so falling-off-a-log easy to join the ranks of members here. I don't make a big deal out of it; I don't place a lot of obstacles in the way. No biography needs to be sent, no form needs to be filled out, and no personal information needs to be given.

Like I said, you can have virtually all the benefits of being a guest AND all the benefits of membership by just signing up for a nondescript Gmail account and then signing up for an account on CathInfo.

What is a Gmail account like catholic45322@gmail.com going to say about you? Nothing. CathInfo usernames can be extremely nondescript and anonymous as well. It's not like I require first & last names to be used or anything like that.