Should the forum allow guest members debate thread

[CharlesX]

As we know, this forum has only been accessible to members, with no logins without signing up (guests). I don't know whether there is a choice about this, or whether it's effective in dealing with the problems we have with spam, if it's the former it's a shame because I think most of us don't want it and if it's the latter I think it's oppressive as a solution (we still seem to get some spam as well, unfortunately).

Moderators shouldn't take this poll as telling them they're wrong in their job, just a democratic showing of people's views. I think it's a bit of a shame we're turning off casual and young members this way, and if there's good reasons not to,  I want to hear those!

Edit: Feel free just to contribute to thread messages even if you don't want to vote (no one else voting after 1 hour = not looking good).

Fuirther edit: Have removed previous formal poll after 15 hours as I feel it may be divisive and counter-productive, not to mention borderline inappropriate. Thank you however for the three others who voted for allowing guests (no one seems to have voted for the status quo).

[thealmightymudworm]

Ideally guests should be able to view the forum but not post imo. The open post rule led to excessive spamming but the current situation means people can't see why they should sign up in the first place.

[a moderator]

I had nothing to do with the decision to restrict board access to members, but I don't recall having had to deal with any spam since then, and membership has increased significantly, suggesting that denial of acces has prompted a number of former lurkers to join up, so I'm not seeing a downside.

ETA: Not voting because it would not be appropriate for an interested party such as myself to get involved in the polling.

[The Editor (Alex B)]

The reasoning behind the change was mainly to deal with spam posts, which, as Ed has pointed out, have now dropped to 0 since being a member has become a requirement for posting.

Unfortunately, ProBoards currently does not appear to have a setting between requiring login and full access without login, otherwise, yes, I would have made it possible to view the forum without logging in.

[thealmightymudworm]

Feb 28, 2023 22:25:00 GMT a moderator said:

I had nothing to do with the decision to restrict board access to members, but I don't recall having had to deal with any spam since then, and membership has increased significantly, suggesting that denial of acces has prompted a number of former lurkers to join up, so I'm not seeing a downside.

ETA: Not voting because it would not be appropriate for an interested party such as myself to get involved in the polling.

Getting rid of spam is obviously a win and it's true that a number of lurkers have been prompted to become members – I even made a meme about that at the time.

Since then I've wondered whether lurkers signing up is much of a win on its own if they have no intention of posting. We've had (I think) 58 members join since the start of the year of whom 5 have posted at least once. The forum has always had at least 50% of posters stuck on 0 posts but it's getting worse. It seems unlikely that posters who sign up with names like 'yvfuwgguolfjgxjfwb' are really more involved than passers-by. (Prove me wrong yvfuwgguolfjgxjfwb !)

Meanwhile the number of guests is of course stuck permanently on 0 so there are fewer people on the forum at any given time. Does this matter? I think it does a bit. It's worth something if people are reading and enjoying threads even if they don't post in them. We have a reasonably lively community here – surely we want people to see that? That seems like the best way to help keep FF alive as long as possible. I know there are Facebook groups but a lot of people, perhaps especially young people, hate Facebook and discussion is not the same anyway.

The last thing this hobby needs is to become more insular. A few months ago a search for pretty much any combination of words with Fighting Fantasy had this forum in the top few results whereas now it has disappeared almost completely.

I originally found TUFFF because I remembered struggling with The Crimson Tide and Googled something like ' "The Crimson Tide" solution' . A year ago, a similar search would have brought me here as it was the top result. Now... well see for yourself. There's no way I'd have signed up here if the only page Google could find for this place was the login page.

Maybe I'm being overly sentimental but I find the current situation a bit depressing.

Mar 1, 2023 3:04:33 GMT The Editor (Alex B) said:

The reasoning behind the change was mainly to deal with spam posts, which, as Ed has pointed out, have now dropped to 0 since being a member has become a requirement for posting.

Unfortunately, ProBoards currently does not appear to have a setting between requiring login and full access without login, otherwise, yes, I would have made it possible to view the forum without logging in.

I was going to ask directly about that but didn't want to be annoying. It seems it at least used to be possible to do that on ProBoards forums (including that one) but possibly they've changed it...? There are other ProBoards forums which seem to operate on that basis though.

[Wizard Slayer]

I read this forum for a while (mainly for solutions and reviews after I'd completed a book), but didn't bother to sign up.

Then it closed to guests, so I signed up as a member because I wanted to keep reading.

Then, once I was a member, it felt like I should start contributing where I thought I could. So I did.

So closing the forum to guests has had me posting where otherwise I don't think I ever would have. Whether that's turned out to be a good thing or not isn't for me to say!

[trialmaster]

My situation is exactly the same as Wizard slayer so in that respect at least it has encouraged those that are now members to contribute with their own comments and opinions.

[thealmightymudworm]

Mar 29, 2023 12:51:44 GMT Wizard Slayer said:

I read this forum for a while (mainly for solutions and reviews after I'd completed a book), but didn't bother to sign up.

Then it closed to guests, so I signed up as a member because I wanted to keep reading.

Then, once I was a member, it felt like I should start contributing where I thought I could. So I did.

So closing the forum to guests has had me posting where otherwise I don't think I ever would have. Whether that's turned out to be a good thing or not isn't for me to say!

Mar 29, 2023 21:29:19 GMT trialmaster said:

My situation is exactly the same as Wizard slayer so in that respect at least it has encouraged those that are now members to contribute with their own comments and opinions.

Yes, there's no question that the portcullis coming down prompted a number of long term 'guests'/lurkers to sign up, and some of you have become prolific posters which is great.

The problem is that now there are no guests, long-term or otherwise, and overwhelmingly the new members signing up are doing no more than guests used to do.

Total posts (up to 31st March 2023):

By members joining between 20th Sep and 20th Oct 2022: 419

By members joining between 21st Oct 22 and 31st Mar 23:   26

I think that second number is very low for this forum in recent years, (masked by the still brisk member sign-up rate) but what's more worrying to me is that most of those months were during a time that the forum's pages still appeared in Google results. I'm not sure when we dropped off exactly but maybe not before the end of January...?

Before then people at least knew that there are e.g. solutions to the books here, even if they had to sign up to see them. (The number of posts by members joining since February 1st is 3.)

[The Editor (Alex B)]

Okay, I think I have made it so guests can read but not post etc. I will point out that this was a really, really, really, really tedious thing to do. There is no one setting for this. I had to do this for each individual board (there is about 30-40 boards in this forum). Let me know if it works as advertised.

[scouserob]

I just logged out and could read but not post on this thread.
So it has worked for this board at least. 👍🏻

[thealmightymudworm]

Apr 1, 2023 20:36:15 GMT The Editor (Alex B) said:

Okay, I think I have made it so guests can read but not post etc. I will point out that this was a really, really, really, really tedious thing to do. There is no one setting for this. I had to do this for each individual board (there is about 30-40 boards in this forum). Let me know if it works as advertised.

This is great news. I seem to be able to navigate all round the forum in a private window whilst if I try to reply it asks me to sign in. So all is as it should be. I'm disproportionately happy to see 'guests' numbering above zero again.

Let the call go out: All are welcome at the table [though you may not bring your own spam].

Thanks for putting the time and effort in to sorting this out.

[CharlesX]

Agree with others it's great this has been sorted out, and appreciate it must have been technical, hard work, thank you The Editor (Alex B).

   Perhaps this thread should be locked now this has seemingly been resolved?

[a moderator]

Well, the spammers are back. The offending account has been staked and burned, but I doubt that it'll be the only one.

Let's hope that all the work Alex put in to allow guests to gaze into the forum attracts some more positive traffic as well.

[CharlesX]

I thought I recognised the account doing the spamming (something about penis products) as one of those who had previously posted a number of friendly FF related remarks on the forum. Presumably more evidence you can't trust people at face value. I have noticed more than one spam style message since the site clamped down on it via making membership mandatory, my view is the numbers have definitely gone down but are unfortunately still problematic.

[a moderator]

Apr 15, 2023 19:30:11 GMT CharlesX said:

I thought I recognised the account doing the spamming (something about penis products) as one of those who had previously posted a number of friendly FF related remarks on the forum.

You were mistaken. The perpetrator registered yesterday and made just the one post before I pierced their account with the horn of the GarBANtis beast and strengthened the wards against their IP address.