What's the use of private forums? And, why are forums blocking content from fans?

What's the use of private forums? And, why are forums blocking content from fans?

I love fan forums, those amazing sites built by loving fans in honor of their favorite TV show, character or celebrity, populated with tens of thousands of posts - loving debates and content devoted to one central figure/show.

For example, Doctor Who is one of my favorite characters/shows of all times and I'm more likely to join a fan made forum about Doctor Who than an 'official' forum or even an 'official' Doctor Who FB page as it's way more fun talking with real fans who love the show as much as I do.

So anyway, today I was checking around for new fan forums of interest and found one devoted to a particular singer that was completely private. This thing had ranked for some obscure phrase, which I'm sure no one was searching out. And, I happen to stumble upon it by accident. And, no possibility to see the content without signing in.

Not sure if they rank for anything many 'fans' would be searching for or if the forum has much of a real content bank at all - considering you have to sign up and sign in to even see the basic content on site.

I'm still puzzled how such sites that block their content out from fans (whom they are supposedly trying to reach) as well as Google can hope to attract new members.

Unless they are somehow using social media (my best guess) such as Facebook to attract new members/posts.

Seems counter productive to me, to block your potential members/fans from seeing your content if those are the people you are trying to attract to your site.

I can see how some sub-forums with sensitive or private info might be reserved to 'members' only, that's just natural. But not the entire forum!

Another issue here, how they had a big Adsense banner on the main/home page. No real content going on there, so what's the justification for that?



Just assumed Google required actual meaningful content for pages where Adsense is being shown.

Maybe it's a public service ad, who knows. :/

Anyway, so yeah, that's my gripe with forums that block content meant for fans. How is it useful to do that? At least give the fans some real reason to sign up, rather than locking it behind doors and expecting some kind of mind reading trick to guess at all the good content on that site. Seems counter productive to me.