Just wondering if anyone knows of a way to turn off the privacy feature for a single thread. Something like Mod Tools comes close, but doesn't allow for this feature.

Can anybody think of a way to do this? Any way you can bypass the privacy settings?

do you mean like quarantine thread - users have to post something before they can gain access to your forum

if so then that's the same as what my forum uses

I created a member role that only has access to an "awaiting activation" category (which I also made a default role) so after they've said hi and a moderator has checked their IP against our blacklist the mod will change their user role to a role that allows access to the rest of the forum

this was achieved without any extra addons; I think :)