board77

In the "last discussion evah" about opening the board, the question was raised (by me) of whether non-members would be able to read the forums. The suggestion was made (by the iniminable Mizz Prim) that perhaps the best solution was to have one or more forums by readable by non-members so that they could at least get a taste of the place. The question then got buried and was never resolved.

My suggestion is that we hold a vote in each forum (except the Outside forums and the ToE forums) to determine whether that forum would be readable by non-members when we open. My questions are, is it at actually possible to have some (or for that matter, all) forums readable by non-members or not. And secondly, whether people think it is a good idea.

What say you?

We can indeed do that, Voronwe, even here. We can set permissions individually for all forums.

We can set a forum so that unregistered people can read but not post, if that is preferred, or we can allow them to post.

Forums can also remain visible only to registered members, just as they are now.

It just seemed to me that if we want to attract compatible people to this board, it might be good to have an interesting forum or two out where people can read them. It might also keep people who are definitely not going to fit in from registering just to see what the place is like.

So do you think of my idea of holding separate votes in each forum? Or what alternative suggestion do you have (if any) for resolving this one way or the other?

Well, I see no problem with what you propose. There won't of course be any way to be sure that people voting in each forum are actually frequenters of that forum, but we can at least ask that people not vote in forums they don't go into much.

I wonder if we ought to leave it up to the forums to decide how they decide this? For example, I can't see the Symposium going for this—people post rather personally and intensely there. There may be a clear consensus for or against the idea that eliminates the need for a vote imposed by admins.

It's important to note that a read-only forum will probably be read and archived by Googlebots.

Thanks for starting a discussion that has been waiting to come up for months - bits and pieces of this have been discussed repeatedly - I'm hoping that maybe Alandriel can supply some previous insights for us!

I regret to say I don't like the idea of voting on each forum very much.

What problem do people have with google reading the board?

I think apart from ToE and the Outside forums, all forums can safely be read.

But if there are other objections to making a forum readable for all, I think they should be discussed here, and it should then be decided on rational grounds and as a result of convincing arguments, whether a forum should be readable or not.
I prefer that to a vote based on the gut feeling of the denizens of a forum (which might be outweighed or not by the vote of those who do not frequent the forum much, and hence feel quite differently about it).

Truehobbit, are you saying that the people who most use a forum should not be the ones to make the decision? Note that we're talking about a forum-by-forum decision, i.e., one forum might be open read-only and another might remain readable only by the registered.

Google reading a forum is a problem for some people who would prefer not to have a lot of archived information associated with their screen names.

Strangers reading a forum is a problem in forums where the discussion tends to be more personal, i.e., among friends. Of course it is not truly private, and no wise person behaves as if it were, but it does make a difference to some people and in some forums to know that complete strangers can't read their posts.

Hobby, the other alternative that I was going to suggest is to have one vote, here in the Business forum, in which all members are asked to state which forums, if any, that want to be readable by non-members. Would you support that idea?

I am going to throw out a suggestion here.
To keep things simple, and to focus the discussion on the topic, how about offering The Turf as the forum for now?
It seems to me to be the least sensitive while offering the majority of our activity. By doing so, we will alleviate the need to get bogged down in forum by forum debates, and focus on the issue of offering a read only forum for the general public.

For the record I am skeptical that anyone will bother to read anything here. I hope I am wrong about that though.

Personally, I would support having everything readable other then the ToE, Business, and Outside forums.

In some ways I think the Symposium would be out best selling point, because the ability of the membership to discuss such hot topics so courteously (usually) really speaks volumes. But I could also understand why some people would rather not have that forum readable. I think the all of the Dicisne hoc opus artem esse? forums and the Made in Dale forum would be good to have readable, and I really can't see any reason not to have any of them those readable.

But I still think the only fair way to do it would be to allow the membership to vote on each forum. It probably would make more sense from a practical point of view to do it as one vote of all of the membership rather then to do separate votes in each forum. I think we should let the majority rule on this one.

I guess I keep coming back to the Symposium because that is where people put threads that are both personal and serious, and I would hate to no longer have a place where a B77 member could, say, ask for advice on a serious health problem, or discuss living with mental illness in a family member (these are theoretical examples) while feeling as if they are mainly speaking to friends. It isn't all politics in there. And although I completely agree that the civil discussions in there are wonderful to see, I think it's something people would have to read for a while to appreciate.

I do agree that the arts forums and the hobby forum are good candidates to be readable. They say a lot about who we are and the level of discussion we like here.

What I was trying to say however unsuccessfully was that I think we should get by the topic of whether this will happen at all before we get bogged down in what forums it may or may not happen in.

Think back as to which forum sucked you into the other message boards you belong to, or used to belong to. I was wandering around on the front page of TORC, looking for a trailer link, and got sucked into a Tom's thread with an irresistible title. Now I haven't been to Tom's in months, and I have little interest in most of the lighter threads here, but if I hadn't clicked on that thread, well, I'd have a life, dammit!

I say open all of them for view, except TOE. The illusion that I can pull up a comfy chair in the Symposium and chat with my friends about my mentally ill children in perfect secrecy is just that - an illusion. But I still do it {{{insert shameless plug for my thread, "The Black Dog Inn", here}}}. Even now our board is not completely hack-proof. As soon as you open it to all comers, anyone can join and see all the forums. I see no reason to hide the best parts, just because we want to keep them to ourselves and remain a static group. Where would we be without some of the stellar members (you know who you are) on this board who have been posting with us (here and in The Elsewhere) for less than a year?

I see what you're getting at, Holby, but what prompted me to suggest this back when was the idea of showing them what we're about—what we can offer that's unlike other boards—and the Turf isn't exactly it. It's fun and I like it, but there are a lot of people posting here now who were drawn in to TORC because of some of the pretty high-level discussion threads there. I would like to see some bait out there for all kinds of good people, including these.

Edit: Post took forever to go through. Laureanna, thanks for your view on the Symposium. I just wonder if you've considered—would you also want those threads stored forever in Google to come up whenever someone Googles on your screen name? Perhaps many months or even several years from now? Perhaps you're fine with that—and I completely agree that we're not talking about real privacy here, except from Google—but I'm afraid some people might alter their posting habits if they thought, say, that someone they feared or disliked could be reading their posts with complete anonymity.

Holbytla wrote:

What I was trying to say however unsuccessfully was that I think we should get by the topic of whether this will happen at all before we get bogged down in what forums it may or may not happen in.

But Holby, that was potentially involve having to do two separate discussions, and two separate votes. That would take TOO long. If a majority don't want to have this happen at all, that would be reflected in the vote as I have suggested it, wouldn't it?

Prim the fact is 52% of all posts are in Turf.
It is the common meeting place, and I for one like the way that all groups congregate there. The m00bs, the Rp gang, the Manwe-ites , etc.
I think it says a lot about us, and it definitely would simplify things. We take forever doing anything around here. This would at least give us a clear indication of how everyone feels without having to wade through each forum and 10,000 different opinions. A simple yes or no to start off with is what I am basically saying.

Holbytla wrote:

Prim the fact is 52% of all posts are in Turf.
It is the common meeting place, and I for one like the way that all groups congregate there.

Interesting that you say that. I rarely go into Turf because my time is limited (those threads move fast!) and my time zone is unfriendly - the conversations are all done and everyone is in bed by the time I get there; it's like getting to a party to find nothing but used glasses and dried out dip with broken crackers in it. It's disheartening.

But back to the subject!

I am taken aback by this conversation! I thought "Open the Board" meant that it was to be open to be read by anyone (except ToE for legal reasons etc). Of course, non-registered people shouldn't be able to post so the 'guest' option has to be turned off, but frankly, alot of people need to lurk for awhile before they feel comfortable.

I am not sure making forums read only is a good idea, mostly for the reasons Prim gave. I am not sure I want what has been posted here in the past associated with my screen name, or photo etc. If we dig back far enough (say last week), there will be posts that were made in the assumption that they would never get public viewing. Go back to posts in the first couple of months of this year (or earlier) and there is some quite personal information there that I really would not want random surfer to see. And before you ask, not going to say what.

The only positive point about a read only 'Turf' that I can see is that it will stop the people who sign up without knowing anything about us, and barge in disrupting.

Not sure that outweighs the bad though.

I mean if we do have the 'symposium' open we will attract more of the aggresive far right posters we had so much fun with in the other place, rushing in to defend Bush or burning books or the death penalty.

One of the nice thing about the group we have on B77 is that, more or less, it is balanced and people listen and read arguments. I think we will lose that when we open, but read only will hasten that loss.

I thought the same as Impenitent in my innocent mind, and I am all for making all forums readable, except ToE and Outside. (Opening means making readable)

There is a lot of personal sensitive stuff in Turf too, tucked away. The least personal ones are the Discne etc and Made in Dale. I don't know enough about There and Back Again.

The welcome forum would be appropriate, and the directed discussions (movies, books, games) too.

Turf I am ambivalent about...it's where most of our posts are, but it's also sort of the glue of the community, emphasis on the community. Letting people who might want to be a part of the community read it makes sense, but so does keeping it within the community...and there is some personal stuff there...

I think that allowing some forums to be visible to all, while saying upfront that others (and they can be listed and described) require the minor commitment of actually signing up for the site, might be a good balance (and inducement to join).