Walling off the content directories was an experiment to boost community membership signup, as community members are far more active than anonymous visitors. It

Walling off the content directories was an experiment to boost community membership signup, as community members are far more active than anonymous visitors. It's worked — people have joined the community at a much higher rate — but the downstream results haven't been significant enough for this to really be the backbone of our growth strategy. I will likely revert it soon in favor of other approaches, for example, creating search engine friendly evergreen content like this article.