I want to encourage people to become members, so I disallow guests seeing profiles. But I was thinking it would be nice that instead of completely blocking profiles, it would show a limited amount, such as the name and avatar.

Does anybody else think this is a good idea? Worth suggesting at the forge?

One of the problems with a list though is that everything links back to their profiles. So it would be nice to have something simple, like the original guest mentioned, and then say. "This is [username]'s limited profile. In order to see the full profile, please [link]register[/link], or something like that.

Or, even better, would be allowing users to set which fields are publicly viewable, which are limited to registered members, and which are only allowed to connections and/or moderators.

Maybe I'm not understanding, but profile tabs can be set for registered or public etc. So whatever you don't want guests to see, set as registered.

Allow users to choose what they want available or not available to the public, (and maybe have some special info that is only available to their friends/connections), is my meaning.

The reason for that is that people have different reasons for using their profile. Some want it to be mostly for friends, some want it to serve as a kind of "Home Page" for them.