I don't think we can answer the benefit question unless we know just how much time the mods spend cleaning up after the spammers. There are also the jokers who come simply to post a gripe about a service provider and then disappear. As a matter of fact, the folks at fodors.com often SEND people to FT to complain about something So, they keep all the good information to themselves & send the garbage to FT

I don't think it's such a terrible thing for a newbie to learn the FT ropes, particularly searching.

If they have a question they can't find an answer to, or have some information they would like to share that hasn't already been shared, a moderator could post the question or comment. I think that's far less a burden than cleaning up the forums.