Personally, I thought the quality of the discussions and posts were higher before the open registration.
Since open registration, it seems, that there has been less discussion and the focus has drifted from being primarily about design (in all of its disciplines) to now being just updates to design tools, development/framework links and startups.
Which I think is a shame. DN was really the only community online where there was interesting content being shared from across all disciplines. For example, it wasn't uncommon to have discussions about print design and not just web and UX. We can all take some of the blame for this by not being more actively engaged and sharing/voting for better stuff. Going off my post history, I certainly should be more of a participant and will try to be.
The original registration process had its downsides, but I think it lead to more engaged users. I'm in Sydney, which meant that the registration window was at 4am locally. Not a huge issue for those in the US or on that timezone, but that limited window meant that anyone who wanted to participate had to jump through a few hoops.
My guess is it will never go back to how it was. This is now someone's business which needs to pay for itself, and not just a side project that LayerVault would run at a loss because they could.
Personally, I thought the quality of the discussions and posts were higher before the open registration.
Since open registration, it seems, that there has been less discussion and the focus has drifted from being primarily about design (in all of its disciplines) to now being just updates to design tools, development/framework links and startups.
Which I think is a shame. DN was really the only community online where there was interesting content being shared from across all disciplines. For example, it wasn't uncommon to have discussions about print design and not just web and UX. We can all take some of the blame for this by not being more actively engaged and sharing/voting for better stuff. Going off my post history, I certainly should be more of a participant and will try to be.
The original registration process had its downsides, but I think it lead to more engaged users. I'm in Sydney, which meant that the registration window was at 4am locally. Not a huge issue for those in the US or on that timezone, but that limited window meant that anyone who wanted to participate had to jump through a few hoops.
My guess is it will never go back to how it was. This is now someone's business which needs to pay for itself, and not just a side project that LayerVault would run at a loss because they could.