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Guests should see all and post all

0 (0%)

Guests should see all, post nothing

2 (6.7%)

Guests should see some, post some

2 (6.7%)

Guests should see some, post nothing

20 (66.7%)

Guests shouldn't see anything.

6 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 30

[Selroth]

This is a pretty big questions that has a huge effect on privacy.


A month or so ago, guests were able to only see (and not reply to) member introductions.  But, I came to realize that this is more than enough for a guest to find if someone is on the site, read about them, and get some rather personal details.  If we are to have a section of the site viewable by guests, we shouldn't have it be somewhere as personal as introductions.


The reason we originally made introductions guest-viewable was to show we are an active site full of members they can potentially relate with.  It was to show who we are, and why we're here. 


The more a guest can see and do, the more inclined they will be to join as a member.  Thus, we'll grow quicker.  But, the less a guest can see and do, the more privacy our existing members have.  So, it's a trade-off either way. 


For the past month, we have had members join still (possibly not as much as we would've had) with guests having no permissions.  So, it can work this way it seems.

[Alastago]

I'm unsure actually. When the about you section was public, people did know about that. Newcomers too would have known it was public. Thus people would be more considerate with what they put there. "You know it's public, so you shouldn't put stuff there that you don't want public."

And i think it should stay with the about you section, it gives people a positive view on the site, since it's just simple 'meet and greet', and things that you don't want public will stay out of there.

[Kiantis]

I've voted the last one, though it wouldn't be bad to have a public 'face'.
Nothing related to posts actually, but something that explains draconity to someone who's passing by.

Something that could even be build to stay as it is even for long.
Sorta an introduction, but more deep?

I have somewhat the idea that even introductions could have some problems if publicly viewable.
And for the point of not putting certain info on there: though it's an introduction, what's supposed to a member to do if not talk about the self? Really, if one is introducing themselves, i hardly think that would be a random act.

While though is true that a touch of the community could be also good, in the end i'm quite uncertain, even if i've already voted.


PS.
Not to mention that publicly available pages may get indexed by automated crawlers.

[Aurelia]

Stop doing site things that I have planned to do :P

I've voted for "guests can see some things, post nothing".  I liked it how it was before so guests can see the draconity.org section of the forum (where this is posted) and the About You section so they can see the kind of members we have here and know if it's for them or not.  I've always had doubts about the faces and voices of draconity threads being visible to guests, but even though the threads are visible the pictures/voices are NOT viewable to guests if the members have attached them to their post and not just added them in as a link.  That said, I still think those 2 threads should be even less visible just in case, but hadn't worked out how yet and, to be honest, wasn't going to worry about it until after the wedding as nothing is viewable to guests right now anyway.

The blogs can be set viewable or non-viewable to guests by the blog owner.  Most people have them set as viewable to guests and that was totally their choice, my concern about this is people not realising just how much information someone could see about them on there, or that other members may reply in that viewable area not realising their answers are viewable to guests too.  So I'd like to make all blogs viewable to members only - again, something that I had on the list of things to do but have said before that I just don't have the time to sort that out yet and as noone was saying "YOU MUST DO THIS!!!!" even after I pointed it out in the newsletter, I kept it on the list rather than rushing to do it now.

At the end of the day, it's nice for guests to see parts of the site.  I know I wouldn't feel comfortable joining a site that I couldn't see any of, and I'm about as out-going as you get lol!  We still have had members join while the site has been member-only but it always makes me wonder just how many people have decided not to join because they can't see what the site is actually like.

It worked the way it was before and as I said when Sel changed it, I don't feel we had any issues to warrant being on lock-down.  If anyone did post something that was TMI, me or one of the mods would remove it and remind the member not to post personal information in guest viewable areas.  For the most part though, people know which areas can be seen by all and are responsible with their own information :)

I don't think guests should be able to post on anything.  That's the whole point of the registration system, to weed out the spammer, bots, etc and considering the areas open to guests to view are About You and site issue/development discussion areas, there's no reason any guest would ever need to post anything because they won't be introducing themselves (as they aren't a member) nor would they know enough about the site to enter into discussion because they can only see 2 sections.  The 2 areas viewable for guests are there for purely informative purposes only.  If they want to participate it's not as if the registration is that difficult :)

[Daariv]

I think guests should see some boards, like About You, Draconity.org and Special Events, post nothing at them......

So that they have a lil' look at what we do in here, and then they can decide: register - or not?

[Cerapter]

Post nothing. Trolls turn back when they have to bother with registering.

I think they should be able to see some, but I actually think that "some" should be discussions, and not "about you" posts. Because that is less personal. Perhaps the Heated and/or Cooled sections, possibly the Spirituality section, for those who want to know more about us but stay anonymous themselves. I actually think a lot of the discussions in these sections on Draconity itself, would show many non-members that we're not as loony as they tend to think.

Profile viewing, I think should be disabled. Maybe even usernames, but I don't think that's easy to remove.

[Lunarya]

But trolls bring fun and excitement...

[Cerapter]

They usually just frustrate me. We should have a poll on the matter before we conclude whether or not we as a community would like to have trolls. :P

[Aurelia]

Profile viewing, I think should be disabled. Maybe even usernames, but I don't think that's easy to remove.

Yeah guests could never view profiles, that should always stay the same.  Usernames we can't remove and I'm not sure that would make much difference really - a lot of people use the usernames of people in here (I know that I can't register Aurelia on a lot of sites because other people already have) so the only thing to tie names together (which is what I've assumed your concern is?) would be avatars, and I don't think guests could see those anyway.

Valid points, I had forgotten to mention about profiles always being hidden to guests.

[11dragons]

Yeah, they can bring fun and excitement, but also stupidity and frustration if they arent smart about shit.
Sel, this is something I was talking to Lunarya about recently xP
This poll is a really good idea.

Lets see what people say.

[Redalgo]

I think they should be able to see some, but I actually think that "some" should be discussions, and not "about you" posts. Because that is less personal. Perhaps the Heated and/or Cooled sections, possibly the Spirituality section, for those who want to know more about us but stay anonymous themselves. I actually think a lot of the discussions in these sections on Draconity itself, would show many non-members that we're not as loony as they tend to think. Profile viewing, I think should be disabled. Maybe even usernames, but I don't think that's easy to remove.

I strongly agree with this. If profiles, "about you," "private health," and other sensitive sorts of threads are barred it would not concern me if guests could browse many of our other topics here. The catch is that many of the users on this site have made posts they may have intended to remain solely amongst our number rather than opened completely to the public. That has at least some potential to make the locking of more personal threads a moot point, right? I am not sure how one could get around this but it is something that might merit consideration.

Where I seem to disagree with most people though is in my position that guests should be able to post in the threads they can view. Guest trolls can be ignored, guidelines could be enforced enough that threads do not become overrun by malicious onslaughts of spam, and intelligent discussions with non-kin (when/if they occur) could bring fresh and even constructive perspectives to our discussions. If too many problems start to crop up we could always have a new discussion to vote on and decide whether to revert to our old guest policies.

[Rocangus]

I think letting guest see this section and the chat one could be a nice idea. No posting, and not able to see anything else though. This is to avoid severe loss of privacy, trolls and spammers.

[Canvasian]

I think I would agree that some of the conversation sections of the site should be viewable, but perhaps not the "about me" sections, for the reasons that Cerapter mentioned  But to repel trolls, non-members should not be able to post, I think. You don't have to be 'kin to join the site, and it's a fairly easy thing to do if a non-kin would like to talk... so I don't think that requiring membership for that would cut down much on potential conversations with non-kin 

[Cerapter]

If we want guests to post, we should definitely have a CAPTCHA. I have never seen a message board without it not get spam bots posting porn.

[Redalgo]

If we want guests to post, we should definitely have a CAPTCHA. I have never seen a message board without it not get spam bots posting porn.

Definitely - spam bots do love to post porn.