[chrishajer]

The default role is set in bb-includes/capabilities.php around line 485

$user->set_role('member');

This is a job for a plugin, but I haven’t tried to write one yet, so if you were to change that word member to inactive, my guess would be that that would make any new member inactive and then the keymaster would need to edit their role to make them members.

ACTUALLY – that didn’t work

In bb-includes/pluggable.php, line 361 says this:

bb_update_usermeta( $user_id, $bb_table_prefix . 'capabilities', array('member' => true) );

I changed member to inactive there, and now new users are inactive when they first register.

Like I said, this is really a job for a plugin, but you could probably use this last change temporarily until a proper plugin is written.

HTH, and be warned this is not a good way of doing it. It should really be a plugin I think.