Log In Or Not?

[Ben]

I recently made SSC's forums not public because I didn't want some people to come here. It has increased the membership and posting noticably. However, should I keep it like this? Many of the members don't post, and there are nearly 70 members without a single post as of now.

If anyone was wondering, keeping the forums private doesn't keep bots from reading the topics and such. GoogleBot and other bots are treated as normal members.

[blaze]

No no no make it public! A lot of people just want to solve one problem and then they stop posting, so why have them sign up and all that when they can just look around real quick? Also, when I'm banned I usually visit the site with a proxy to read whats new :P , but when I was banned just a short while ago I couldn't! It made me itch for the forums.

[Hyper_9]

Originally posted by blaze@Jun 22 2004, 03:51 PM
Also, when I'm banned I usually visit the site with a proxy to read whats new :P , but when I was banned just a short while ago I couldn't!

Exactly why I think we should keep private. This way, at least we Don't have to worry about some anon SOB coming in and doing things. Probably would cut back on jackers too.

Also, I swear, I thought there was a "No IP changing method" rule being enforced......

[Ben]

I didn't like that idea. I even use a proxy sometimes to view stuff. They have real uses and there should be no rule against it. Besides it wouldn't change a thing about what we do when banning.

Well blaze you're only convincing me to keep it with the being banned and checking with a proxy. :P Part of being banned is not visiting the forums.

[MilkMan]

I say keep it private because it makes more people want to become users and then they wind up posting. Then you could set up a rule; if they don't post after a month(suggested) then they are unregistered. Simple as that. Also if they only post once and then stop give them a month as well.

[DX]

Give them longer. A month isnt fair-look at people like aquatech and XN. They may pop up from time to time and post. Also some people might not post, but still use the site to get tech info and the such. I would favor keeping it private. [at]Doom, maybe you should have made a poll for this to see what the majority of the people think.

[Hyper_9]

Originally posted by MilkMan@Jun 23 2004, 09:50 AM
I say keep it private...

if they don't post after a month(suggested) then they are unregistered. Also if they only post once and then stop give them a month as well.

No. Its one way or another. No rules, no compromises. We are privy or we arent privy. No 1 month inactivity rules and private. Also, it would have to be done manually. There isn't any seting for that.

[Ben]

Well, there is something that I can do to delete all the non-posting members, but I'd rather not do that.

I have made this a poll btw. I think it's the first time I did that.

[Jadefalcon09]

In my opinion the forums need to be kept private, and restricted to members only. If someone really wanted to join in with the community, they woudl email one of the staff members. This will cut down on spammers and jackers. excellent idea. It will make them look around the forums to instead of us answering the same question a million times.

[Ben]

Actually they won't have to email us, just fill out the registration form. I would have to handle what is now the 10 or so registrations daily...

[pyro]

I think they should stay private. But I Don't understand how that does anything. People can still sign up. So what is going to do? :huh:
And btw maybe some people Don't post because they Don't think what they say may be relivant to what everyone else is talking about.

[Burnerboy]

You can keep it however you want it, As for the people that never post, I also have a membership to a video game board and their policy is that if you do not post at least once a month then their account is deleted and they would not get any second chances

[trekkie00]

The reason I joined was so I would be able to read the different forums. Being able to post was just a side-effect.

[Silence]

No! Keep it private!

As others have stated, private polls prevent these superbly clean forums from being abused in numerous ways. In addition, requiring membership is not such a bad thing--when I recently joined, there was practically no hassle (I don't think there was even an email confirmation, but I may be wrong). I don't regret joining at all, and I wish I had taken the initiative much earlier--the SSC forums are now my life (which should be pretty obvious).

There are numerous methods to deal with membership problems, even though membership appears to be minimal. As Milkman and Burnerboy stated, there should be a rule for posting every so often--but one should also keep in mind Duxburian's point about rare posting. A good compromise, while membership is small, is to allow about 6 or 12 months between posts. Another idea: if possible, use some dual-level membership, where one can view forever in the first level and post within a month or so in the second level. If one goes back to the first level because he or she hasn't posted within a month, then their old profile can easily be re-approved. Well, what do you guys think?

By the way, Ben, if you can turn standard threads into polls, can you do that for my PCgH thread? If I can do that myself, can you show me how? Otherwise, if you approved, I could just give you the poll information.

[Ben]

This thread is rather old and represents some older thoughts of mine.

Since then, I've learned that deleting member accounts can and will be damaging and that not making your forum at least mostly public will reduce the number of visitors you'll receive. Forum threads make excellent search engine content. I also tried to make registration easier and it's good to see that it was easy.

An unintended effect of the required membership period was the creation of a lot of accounts whose sole purpose was to view the forums. These accounts did nothing but view threads and weren't really helping (or hurting for that matter) the community.

It is perfectly natural for people to stop posting at forums eventually. Some of them come back. Some people want to contact older people. Deleting their accounts would obviously be counter-productive. As for a system that automatically upgrades and downgrades user accounts, the effort to modify the board to do that would outweigh any potential benefits (and to me, there are no benefits).

We don't run into many problem members anyway. That's likely due to the quality of the discussion, our board rules and website TOS, as well as the lack of problem members to begin with.