I think the fact that people are so emotional about this -- including the GUEST flamers -- indicates the high quality and staying power of this site. You're not going to please everyone. I'd like to second two suggestions that were made earlier, which Max may already be incorporating.

First, the capability for a registered member to make a temporarily anonymous post -- for example, when discussing a personal issue (which could be related to music!).

Second, a way for new visitors to post a request for a song without registering first. These could be screened to verify they are bona fide song requests (I'd be willing to take a few a day*, and I'm sure plenty of others would) and then posted as a regular thread (not a PermaThread or other separate collection), under the name of VISITOR REQUEST or some such. This would preserve one of the best parts of the 'Cat, namely, the wonderful discussions that often ensue when someone makes a song request. You might give the visitor an option of posting his or her email address, but I think it would be better to explain that answers will be forthcoming in the Forum. I suppose if you wanted to be fancy, you could have an automatic acknowlegement email with a link to the newly-created thread. That would be friendly, and I imagine not too difficult.

Aloha,
Mark

*I would envision a file like the Help page, that would be accessible to administrators and volunteers. Each request would be followed by a link that says "Post this request". Whenever I logged on, then, I'd check the request file and review as many as I had time for.