Most PDD posts are from people who are not logged in.  A lot of those people either lack and account or are too lazy to log in.  Some of them might be at the Duluth library and not want to use a password on a public computer.  Others might want to remain anonymous from PDD while making a controversial post (a local business owner, perhaps).  Others might be in a hurry and not want to take the extra time (the nature of surfing is often a quick in and out process in between things, so seconds count).

Regardless, a lot of these people won't post nearly as much under the new policy.  Some won't post at all.  I've read a lot of posts that said "I've never posted before but..."  Some of those people won't bother with the 5 minutes to set up a username and password to make "one lousy post."  But some of those one-time posts are insightful and helpful, especially on archaic topics like "Who can help me find a dog sitter in my neighborhood."  If I live in that neighborhood but I'm not registered, I probably won't register just to respond to the one post that I have some insightful information about.  But I might post if it is just a matter of seconds to type a simple post.

This change in PDD policy is a little like Wisconsin's restrictive Voter ID law: in theory is shouldn't change anything, but in fact it could reduce the number of "voters" and "users" quite a lot.  A lot of regulars won't post as much as a result, and the non-regulars will post even less.  It is a big change to PDD that will change the number of people in conversations here.

I don't think the intent is to disenfranchise, but the effect will be.  It might reduce some trolls, but some of the craziest posters are registered users anyway, and some of the best posters are not registered users.  For example, the DNT has required logging in for years and a huge percent of their posters are borderline personalities.  

Crazy people are often more motivated to post than non-crazy people.  Some normal people might not be as motivated to go through the registration process to post into a simple conversation.  One nice thing about PDD is that new people get into the conversation easily.

I think the new PDD policy will result in the loss of as many good posts as bad.

My guess is that it will tend to reduce the range of responses to many topics.  The change may affect the esoteric topics more considerably than others.  In practice, topics like "What is the support group for recovering Thundarr the Lipucian Barbarian addicts like in Duluth?" may have a lower chance of garnering a wide-ranging response from the Duluth community.  

The fast-clicking nature of the internet means that if something takes 5 seconds vs. another thing that takes 5 minutes, a lot more people will respond to the thing that takes 5 seconds.  And I don't think that the community of "5-second responders" is overall worse than the community of "5-minute responders."

The "5-second community," however, is a much larger one.  And being much larger, it is much more representative of the wider Duluth Community.

I don't think the loss of anonymity is trivial.  Anonymity might be important for discussion of controversial topics about local people that we might know or have business dealings with, like http://www.perfectduluthday.com/2009/10/25/regarding-rod-raymond/

If I had seen the Lindsey Lohan spread, I wouldn't want to say so here using my PDD ID that my coworkers know!

An option to edit our own comments for typos after the fact would be nice.