# Reading Forum Without Registering



## ChurchOfGodBear (Feb 19, 2013)

Now that we have full control over the forum, I'm curious as to why we're letting unregistered users view the posts.  I have nothing against this, per se, but I can think of a few reasons we might want to at least force people to register before they can see what we're talking about... not the least of which being that watching the habits of s 8-) me lurkers might prove beneficial to the mods.


----------



## The Mackers (Feb 19, 2013)

i private mailed to a mod about this before... if it were set to private again, meaning you have to register, a certain someone would be more inclined to post if he has already registered, if hes gonna come here to lurk anyway


----------



## CatParty (Feb 19, 2013)

i am all for this idea


----------



## Saney (Feb 19, 2013)

Yeah, it probably should be set to private.


----------



## The Lurker (Feb 19, 2013)

Hello...

I made an account just to respond to this;
Please don't. There are many lurkers, such as myself, who are interested in thesw forums but do not wish to speak. For whatever reasons- personally, I'm shy around new people- but im assuming theres a population of us. 

Besides, if you force Chris to make an account, he'll probably simply stop viewing these forums... Wouldn't you rather know he is listening and learning (evidenced by that newer profile which took some of the advice he was given) then chance the possibility that he'd simply stop reading?

Either way, I guess I'm signed up now. As a member... I disagree with this.


----------



## rocket (Feb 19, 2013)

I don't intend to be a regular poster either, but agree with OP that registration should be mandatory.  In the long run I honestly don't think it matters much (the CWCki's never been private) but y'know personal preferences for the record etc etc.


----------



## LM 697 (Feb 19, 2013)

Personally I think there should be mandatory registration (nothing personal), but the general admin consensus is that they want to keep the board open to all (General is still closed to guests, though).


----------



## Freecell (Feb 19, 2013)

CompyRex said:
			
		

> Personally I think there should be mandatory registration (nothing personal), but the general admin consensus is that they want to keep the board open to all (General is still closed to guests, though).


Seconding that.
Despite that, I honestly don't think a whole lot is affected either way. I don't think we're losing posts by letting it be open, just gaining lurkers. I like the idea of people being able to use the forum as is convenient for them.


			
				The Mackers said:
			
		

> i private mailed to a mod about this before... if it were set to private again, meaning you have to register, a certain someone would be more inclined to post if he has already registered, if hes gonna come here to lurk anyway


That's a dangerous way of thinking. Need I remind you that, last time we had the forum locked, he hacked a regular user's account to maliciously look in on our activities? He doesn't have any incentive to bring out the big guns this way. Think of the users!


----------



## The Lurker (Feb 19, 2013)

Freecell said:
			
		

> That's a dangerous way of thinking. Need I remind you that, last time we had the forum locked, he hacked a regular user's account to maliciously look in on our activities? He doesn't have any incentive to bring out the big guns this way. Think of the users!



Wait... are you talking about Chris? He hacked someone...? O_o Or am I completely wrong about who you're talking about?...


----------



## The Hunter (Feb 19, 2013)

I like the idea of having a closed community, but there's other people out there who want to read discussion about Chris. On a lot of forums, users usually lurk the forums to see if they'd be interested in joining or not (I know I did when the forums were first set up in 2011). There's benefits to having both mandatory registration and a few open forums (I think General should be restricted to established users regardless of what the decision is). I'll just wait for more people to weigh in on this.


----------



## Freecell (Feb 19, 2013)

The Lurker said:
			
		

> Freecell said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


[cwc=Facebook#To_The_Trolls]It was a terrible day for all of us.[/cwc]


----------



## champthom (Feb 19, 2013)

My only concern with having the forum set as private is that I don't want the stupid stuff I or other people say to show up on Google when you do a search. I think Null had some way to work around, but if you can do it so it's public but not index by Google, I'd be fine with that.


----------



## Freecell (Feb 19, 2013)

The search engine indexing thing is just a spider. I disabled those on Forumer because I remember you saying something similar back then. I don't think having it public or private would have an effect because the determining factor is whether or not the site is being crawled by bots. I'm not sure if they're disabled here, but if not, I'll go ahead and turn them off.

Edit: I couldn't find the off switch that existed on Forumer, but I've revoked the Bot group's permission to read the board. That should stop the indexing, and it's also readily reversible should we choose to go that way for whatever reason.


----------



## Null (Feb 19, 2013)

Bots can't view any posts on the forum. To see for yourself, open up a bot (like our friendly Google Bot) and (if you're an admin) click "Test out user's permissions" - you won't be able to see anything. This prevents Bots from indexing our forum posts and what we say.

Unregistered users and users without at least 10 posts will be unable to read the General forum, but they can see it exists.

Anyone at or above 10 posts can post and read General forum topics.


The reason I've decided that the Forum is best being semi-open like it is now, is that when I first joined the CWCki Forums I didn't know it was anything other than a bunch of weirdos hovering over Chris. Personally, it was a little off putting. Randomly I was set into General forum and I grew a lot closer with the lot of you. I think that having guests note there is a community sitting on top of the Chris forums is a good thing and it encourages more contributing posters to sign up with us.


----------



## Tommy_Wiseau (Feb 20, 2013)

First they came for the lurkers, and I said nothing because I was not a lurker...

But don't plan too much guys, it might not come out right.


----------



## Mr. 0 (Feb 20, 2013)

Tommy_Wiseau said:
			
		

> First they came for the lurkers, and I said nothing because I was not a lurker...
> 
> But don't plan too much guys, it might not come out right.


Hmm...

*thinks of Bob and Barb screwing around on the fly with no plans and it still not coming out right*


----------



## SPARKLETWAT (Feb 25, 2013)

I think it's fine the way it is. I got to see who all was here before I registered. I'm here because somebody let me in that there was finally a new forum.


----------

