Arguably, it's disadvantageous to Hexagon to disqualify talent from participation, but it won't do any good if their forums get polluted by spambots that can generate unlimited gmail accounts, which was the case when UBB forums were most popular.

Maybe a middle ground is presently possible, but I imagine someone still has a computer crawling around the internet for sites such as this.

Certainly suggesting that folks pay for a domain name just so they can access this forum will be unpopular, but it is an option.

I can suggest LinkedIn groups to be an alternative or complement to this forum. New Social Media certainly isn't as useful for searching as Old Social Media.