forums: Change to a public for format or keep private

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:59 am

There are some good arguments in the "how to improve the club" thread and one of the major subjects of debate is opening up the forum and making public. Maybe it's time to make that change to make us more visible to the motorsports world. I'd still like to keep a "members only" area if that's possible along w/ leaving the current officer and staff subforums private.

So here's the question of the week. Do we make the forums public? Please vote....

RickyBeam · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:13 pm

totally open? (i.e. anyone can read and post) Not recommended. We would be opening the forums to spambots and trolls. I don't think any of us want to sit around all day policing that crap.

Read only to the public... maybe. But there are sections (swap & sell) that don't make sense if people cannot post.

George Bright · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:35 pm

I voted No. I would like to keep more than the staff post private. I think opening Swap and Sell to all would create a flood of ads. I am afreaid you would have to pick through tons of ads for washers and crap from Joe Q Public and you would have a flood of answers to ads from people who don't really want to buy anything but would just annoy you. Like a mini craigslist.

Todd Breakey · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:00 pm

I thought the swap and sell part of the forum was already open to the public? :whoknows:

Ryan Holton · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:13 pm

Todd Breakey wrote:

I thought the swap and sell part of the forum was already open to the public? :whoknows:

It is.

Error 404: Flood not found

Todd Breakey · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:17 pm

Ryan Holton wrote:

Todd Breakey wrote:

I thought the swap and sell part of the forum was already open to the public? :whoknows:

It is.

Error 404: Flood not found

Lol! The forums need a like button! :thumbsup:

edit: found it!

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:19 pm

Clicking on the Swap n Sell link on the homepage takes you away from THSCC website and to a domain branding site. Apparently, that domain is available for sale. :whoknows:

Ryan Holton · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:24 pm

Steven Carter wrote:

Clicking on the Swap n Sell link on the homepage takes you away from THSCC website and to a domain branding site. Apparently, that domain is available for sale. :whoknows:

Gonna guess that is a relic of when the forum had its own domain name.

RickyBeam · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:11 pm

Wha'da'ya know, swap & sell is viewable to the public. I don't remember it being like that, there it is... "Swap & Sell" and "Visitors"

RickyBeam · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:17 pm

Also... if opening the forum is to get more traffic to the site (and thus more eyeballs taking notice of the club), robots.txt disallows /forum (and a number of other urls) so nothing will index it anyway.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:28 pm

RickyBeam wrote:

Also... if opening the forum is to get more traffic to the site (and thus more eyeballs taking notice of the club), robots.txt disallows /forum (and a number of other urls) so nothing will index it anyway.

Yup, we had to do that with our alpha platform at work...cake

.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:28 am

Swap and sell is viewable by anyone. It even used to be editable by "guest" accounts. But it quickly turned into a battle with automated Spambots. So I turned off the ability for non-members to post.

I think any future forum should not allow un-registered users to post. And for anyone who runs a forum, they know there is a war being waged between forum software author, forum admins and those who author spambots. There is software that "knows" how forum software such as ours works, so they will create a new account and post spam all on their own. Many of the CAPTCHA systems are either completely or mostly broken/defeated (I haven't looked in the past few months to see how things are going for current CAPTCHA systems).

One solution that seems to work OK is to ask for an answer to a question that an automated bot couldn't figure out on it's own (such as by taking the question, then using google search to build a list of potential answers and then brute forcing an answer. For example asking "What color is the sky?" is something a bot might actually figure out on its own). To register on this forum today, you have to provide a "secret answer" to a question. I don't even give the bot clues. I basically say "email this address to get the answer". And right now I have to respond to each of those emails. But it is much easier than cleaning up the automated bot registrations.

Richard

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:30 am

RickyBeam wrote:

Also... if opening the forum is to get more traffic to the site (and thus more eyeballs taking notice of the club), robots.txt disallows /forum (and a number of other urls) so nothing will index it anyway.

I am not an expert, but I think we could stop well behaving spiders (such as Google) from crawling the forum posts. So yes, they could be viewable to the public and we might have some control over how they may show up in online searches.

Richard

Brian Marks · **Posted:** Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:50 am

I've posted some things over the years that was meant for local, private, club audience only. I'd not want prior posts made public for this reason.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:48 am

Brian Marks wrote:

I've posted some things over the years that was meant for local, private, club audience only. I'd not want prior posts made public for this reason.

Brian,

That is the #1 reason that my opinion is that if we open up the forum to the public that we re-launch with a totally new site and new (empty) content. So that any content posted earlier honors that implied contract between the club and forum users that the forum content is private.

Richard

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