Being a pirateninja can be hazardous to your health. Warning: this comic and the one it’s a spinoff to contains violence, semi-nudity, a pirateninja, and very, very geeky roleplaying humor. It is not suitable for younger readers. I am going to break the link for added protection.
If you cannot instantly understand why allowing someone who is not a vetted employee to muck around in bowels of your messageboard is an incredibly bad idea from a business standpoint, it is clear you lack the judgement to participate in this discussion.
I don’t have much of a stake in tall of the issues in the OP, but I do find it often annoying as a paid member not to be able to guest’s locations as part of their post. There are several times a week where I’ll read a post that won’t make sense in the absence of knowing the user’s location, and of course 99% of the time they don’t think to mention it. This was a much rarer phenomenon before the massive changeover of people to guest status. Listing location seems to be more useful to other posters than to oneself, so it seems odd to me that it is considered a ‘benefit’ of membership when it’s really more of a benefit to the board.