Our forum should be readable by all

[zombie67]

Can a bot spam into the forums if it is "open"? I know, dumb question but I must ask.

Again, to be clear, I asked for "readable" only. Not writeable.

"I formally request that our forum be made open to all, for viewing."

[YoDude9999]

Can I vote "AYE" twice?

[Maxwell]

Add me to the list of supporters of zombie's request.

[Bok]

To DrPop/Mr Hankey/BeerDrinker,

Not sure why this is happening as it's all set to default (and the default is to show the forums!)

I'd have to investigate further, but you can go into each forum in the forum manager and set the 'Show Private forum' to be yes.

Somehow it thinks they are all private though they are definitely not.

*EDIT* Scratch that, there are custom permissions set for 'unregistered' on most forums - that's what is causing it. Can be fixed by editing those custom permissions on the parent forums and allowing read only.

[Maxwell]

20 minutes after proclaiming he needs sleep, Bok is still up and helping us out...

[YoDude9999]

GIVE THAT MAN A WOMAN, everything else could be unhealthy.

[spingadus]

I nearly didn't sign up for the team when I first came to the forums and found nothing to see. But, I powered through the registration because I really did want to join. There is a good chance that a few people who were on the fence about joining a team were discouraged by the non-readable forum. I'm for giving read access to the public areas as well.

[Mike029]

Again, to be clear, I asked for "readable" only. Not writeable.

"I formally request that our forum be made open to all, for viewing."

How can you argue with this.



I vote to make it readable by all (except for pvt areas) and writable after registering.

[Mr. Hankey]

This was explicitly implemented because of the spammers (quite some time back in fact). I know for a fact we probably still have somewhere in the order of 300 or so fake spammer registrations on the board prior to implementing the two changes we put in place to combat this.

There is a specific mechanism where when people register on the forums, notifying them that they need to post an introduction before they gain access to the rest of the forum. As soon as they make that first post saying who they are and hello, they automatically get promoted from "registered" to "registered and introduced" which grants them access to the rest of the forum. Un-registerd people can only see (and post) in the guest forum. The guest forum is there for people so that they can post if they are having problems.

I have to check as I don't remember, but the registration confirmation email contains the instructions about needing to post an introduction, and also once they have registered and logged in they also get a pop-up PM notification as well.

[YoDude9999]

This was explicitly implemented because of the spammers (quite some time back in fact). I know for a fact we probably still have somewhere in the order of 300 or so fake spammer registrations on the board prior to implementing the two changes we put in place to combat this.

There is a specific mechanism where when people register on the forums, notifying them that they need to post an introduction before they gain access to the rest of the forum. As soon as they make that first post saying who they are and hello, they automatically get promoted from "registered" to "registered and introduced" which grants them access to the rest of the forum. Un-registerd people can only see (and post) in the guest forum. The guest forum is there for people so that they can post if they are having problems.

I have to check as I don't remember, but the registration confirmation email contains the instructions about needing to post an introduction, and also once they have registered and logged in they also get a pop-up PM notification as well.

This works well to keep out the spammers, but it describes the mechanics of getting registered and gaining access to the forum. It doesn't however, touch on the issue at hand.

What's being said is that the forum should be open for read only access to all pages except for the Team only private areas. Being read only still keeps the spammers from spamming on the forum and using the current method for validating real people and granting them write access that's already in place, should remain so.