I'm curious...how do all of you feel about forcing guests to log in to your site before they can see anything?

I pretty much see no point in it, because if people can't see what's going on or what kind of characters are already there, how can they establish themselves? Especially if you have to log in before advertising...that's just rude. Granted, the whole thing does keep a lot of stealing attempts at bay (to a degree) and helps the admins monitor who joins. There's benefits of it, too.

Although, I tend to be a little wary of sites that haven't been heard of since...say, January, and force guests to log in. Because if there isn't anyone on, it seems like they're saying, "Hey, we're dying; why not cover it up to get more members?" Or maybe the site is littered with dead or completed topics and characters and needs a little Windex.

What say you?

No matter how tempting the premise is, I won't join such forums. I'm... picky, about where I join (apart from frined-own forums, the only fourm I've joined that isn't my own was Inquest, when that was still alive and well), and like to know what I'm getting into.

I'll tell you exactly how I feel. I feel sorry. Sorry for the people who own the site and decided to do that. Why? Because it was their choice to deprive themselves of multitudes of possible members that, like me, will not join forums that require you to be a member before you can even see them. Rather ridiculous but I don't really feel angry about it because it's their loss and I sort of move on to better things.

Sites that won't let me see anything irk me. It just makes you wonder what they've got to hide.

I've made the mistake of joining a forum or two like that in the past, and I won't do it again. I don't see any point in it and after I see what the board is really like, I just don't come back.

So in the end it doesn't make much sense because it 1) doesn't lead to any more active members and 2) turns people off. So whether you're looking for lots of active members (1) or lots of accounts to make your board look more popular (2), you're not going to get it.

I won't join a site if I can't read information, maybe check out a post or two to see the standards, and lurk. That information makes me form my opinion on the RPG, and if they don't want me to see for those reasons, it obviously isnt worth my time.

I've seen sites that have the rules and what not guest friendly, but just about everything else isn't. That irks me too. I like to see the sorts of plots and roleplays happening before thinking of joining. I also feel that on my own board, why not encourage people to lurk? One of my sites had a lurker for a while who liked ro read our threads.

As for stealing- Well I had a member steal stuff, so forcing guests to log in wont fix that..

Yeah, when it's friend-run, I tend to check it out, but I still prefer to see things before registering.

With one case, I registered with a fake name (like...blahblah32 or something) and the site had been dead since two months before I saw it. The admins were on, but the forum was messy - dead/finished threads everywhere, a bit of spam, some disappeared characters.

It's like shoving your stuff under the bed when you were a kid and made to clean your room.

I'll admit to having made this mistake before. I won't ever do it again. I did it for the theft issue and out of habit (bad habits picked up from other boards I'd been a member of). It's not that I was trying to hide anything. Really, I wasn't. But I'm sure it seemed that way. It also made the place seem really unfriendly, when actually, everyone was happy and welcoming.

That I can understand. :pink: With all the theivery going on with site skins and stuff, it's no wonder people are switching to non guest friendly sites. Of course, members still steal, like Sniks said. ^^

I don't get it, myself. Before I join any sort of site I want to see not only what it's about, but what the rules are, what kinds of characters people are using, how the threads go, etc., and I'm not going to take the time to register just so I can look at a board for maybe ten minutes and decide that I don't like it. Not to mention I'd feel a bit guilty for cluttering up the member list.

I think if a site admin doesn't even have enough confidence in their own board to show it to the entire world, then they're not a very good admin or didn't put enough effort into their site.

I do it out of habit. If someone isn't going to join just because the site doesn't let them see everything, I really don't care what they think about me being a bad admin or trying to hide something - if they want to be unreasonable, so can I. I know, along with the multitude of active members, that the site doesn't have anything to hide, nor is it in the least dead - we're currently the #1 ZB RPG, so apparently guest view isn't as critical as some people think.

To be frank, though, we just came from a site that did the guest limiting thing, so it's ingrained into us. I might change it eventually, but it's not really a priority. Once again, if you can't be assed to spend 20 seconds registering, I'm not bending over asswards to please people who think they're being clever by ignoring no-guest forums. If they want to be illogical like that, I doubt they'll be of much use on the forum proper even if they do join.

edit: everything except current RPs are viewable to guests and they can see archived journeys, so it's not a "you must log in to see the board at all" type thing. THOSE boards piss me off as well.

I've done this, and everytime I regret it. I'll get curious, register, and then end up stuck in one that's been dead for weeks, is cluttered up, and wasn't very interesting. I keep all of my things guest visible because me myself I read the rules, character apps, samples, and all sorts of things. I make sure that I really want to invest my time in a forum before I join so I won't be a dead member, but that's really hard to do when all I can see is the log in box. Also I tried the only members thing before if someone's dedicated to steal your stuff they're gonna steal it. All that's stopping is a maybe 5 minutes at the most register, they steal, then don't come back. All it really does is halt them for a good 5 minutes.

I like to see what I'm getting into.

I like reading other people's posts, the information, but most importantly the rules of a site. It does make sense that before you register you can't make the decision for yourself whether the community is for you.

Other than that I don't join sites that aren't guest friendly.

My site only hides a few forums like character info, just to protect the members creativity. Otherwise I really only take out 3 of the 4 OOC forums and maybe 2 RPG places.

I think it can be a good tactic if you don't go overboard.

I don't have a problem with sites that force you to register to see all. The way I see it, if I register and don't like the place then they're the silly sods who then have to try work out if I'm ever going to be active and once they work out the answer's no they get to delete my account. Nothing for me to be sorry about and the actual registering process takes about a minute. I don't have to even choose a name, because I don't know what my character's going to be like until I've decided to join.

I can see how it would prevent stealing - but only those who are incredibly lazy wouldn't be bothered to take the minute to register so they can steal stuff.

The entire protection thing is - in my opinion - useless unless people don't realise you have hidden things. If you only have one forum hidden and it's not an obvious one (like character apps or anything) then they probably won't notice it's meant to be there. If you have everything or huge chunks missing, then the registering can take place.

Now, this is my policy:

If I can't see the accepted profiles before registering, fine. I can understand that because that would be the easiest way to steal applications. Even if I can't see profiles before being accepted, fine. That is fine. {I've seen people do that more recently, actually.}

Possibly places where 'mature threads' are stored in a safe place away from prying eyes.

But to block the whole thing makes it feel oddly cold to me. It's not that I'm too lazy to type in a word or two to register. It's just that, quite honestly, I don't know what the hell to expect and I have tried registering at these places before. And, almost always, they are dead or half-dead... messy, and only run by the admins with about as little effort as possible.

Or else, once, I found this private board by accident like that that was really meant only for five people to use. They all jumped me when I got on and said, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU HERE?!"

It scared the living shit outta me.

I don't see that point either.

That's also why it's in our advertising rules a forum should not force guests to login before being able to view the board.

If you are advertising, you want people to find your forum and are trying to get new members. Making guests force to login to see the board is just stupid and not welcoming at all.

So... I found a forum with the strangest process... ever.

Half of the board is invisible. You can see the joining information, other peoples applications, basic information, the ooc board (this struck me as weird for having it guest-friendly, of all things), an image request board (???) and an advertising forum.

To join, you need to click on the mandatory links. Unfortunately, a portion of these are not viewable by a guest. Most of them aren't, actually. You can read the General Rules, Site Overview and Face Claim from the list, however there are far more you cannot read, including: Employment, Mafia Codex, Original Blood (Founding Families) and Canon Claim.

Now here is where it gets weirder.

To join, you must copy and paste the application and email it to an Administrator.

...what.

When I asked if there was a guest account to view the forums with, someone just said "Glancing at that stuff, for now, you don't need to know it. Try joining first, then you can read it."

#___________#;;;

I like doing my research before joining-- or I try to. If I don't know how things work, or how the backstory goes (since, for me, the topics I could not read seemed pretty important), how am I to better model my character? I don't feel like waiting for days for an Admin to look over my app, tell me it's not good, and ask me to redo something if I could have gotten it right the first time with the assistance of the other topics. That I could not see. That are not viewable by a guest. |:

I am so confused with this forum. It's like they don't want you to join!

In my opinion, there's no point in blindly joining a board. I want to be able to read the plot and formulate a character before I decide whether or not to join.

If I can't advertise as a guest I remove the site's ad from my board and politely email the admin asking them to stop advertising on my board as a guest without allowing me to return the favor.

I don't really get the point of boards like that. I like to look at the story/plot before I join up (and the rules, because I like boards where mods aren't uptight about character and post requirements.) I wonder how sites like that get any traffic?

Are there people who are really like: "Hm, I want to RP today, I'll just pick a random board--there!" :p

I have everything open to guests on my site with the exception of the staffer forum. When they come I want them to get the full Owen's experience with all of the forums visible. I don't really see a point in making people log in. It's just weird. If they don't want to join, they're not going to join, end of story.

I think the biggest problem with forums you can't see is that... people judge based on their first thought. Everything is about first impressions, and if you cannot see a forum, your first impression is going to be negative.

First impressions are extremely important when it comes to a forum. If you glance at it, like the layout, and can navigate to the plot fairly quickly, good! If you cannot see anything, you sort of sit there wondering why. P:

So, like you said, if you can't see everything, what is there to do?

Over the years I've had a handful of boards and I always made them visible to guests. I figure that if I was considering joining a new board I'd want to see what was going on there, so why not let other people see what's going on on my boards. I tend to make up my mind about a board in the first 10 or so seconds of looking at it and I generally figure that others are pretty much the same way, so I'd rather be able to see more of the board so I can make at least a semi-fair assessment of the board.

Meh, my forum is not only set so that guests can't view posts, but also registration is turned off.

Why? Because it's a private forum, and the RPs run there are 1) invite-only and 2) full up. We're at 11 players in one game and that's huge. It was considered a full group back when we were at 6 players.

Also, every time I turn registrations on, I get all sorts of spam accounts being registered, which are annoying to delete.

If I go to join a site, I absolutely MUST see what I'm joining. If I can't, I don't stay for another second. However, some areas of the site are justified. For one, I never allow guests to see the accepted profiles, because I've had character profiles stolen from myself, and found members using stolen characters before. So it's a bit of a personal peeve.

But if the potential members can't even read the rules, how can they possibly agree to the board's terms of membership before becoming a member? They can't, really.

I don't like that as well. I especially hate the boards that come to your site and advertise for free on your guest friendly forum and then when you go to post back your own, they expect you to register before doing anything. eventually after a couple of those, I said nuts to that, going back to my site and deleting their advertisement from my board. I think I have that right to as well considering its in my board advertising rules. People have a right to read what thier getting into and know things before they join. Not only that but that registering first, You would think it would just make it so much harder to keep maintenance up, deleting people who have only been there once of a couple of times. And further more I agree with a few others that have already said it but I am merely re-emphisizing it. How can you honestly join a board if you nothing about it and can not read or look at it first. I have come across a few boards that advertise one thing but has been completely different on the other side of registration. Now thats crap.Unless it is a private board for certain cliques and friends only, I believe it should be guest friendly and able to be seen by everyone.

I used to have my forums locked off to guests, and forced them to log in. I had problems in the past where my forums had to be closed off from the crowds of spambots that were overrunning my forums (I was a new Admin then, and I didn't know how to handle it). I figured if only members could see the forum, and only accepted characters could post, I was in good shape. The forum did really well, actually, and we only died because of some of the trouble we were having with some of the members. Other than that, we were active :)

I don't do it now, though. That was then, when I still new to board running. It worked ok for me, but I'm never doing it again. It makes me feel like boards who do that have something to hide, but mostly, I feel like they are a complete elite board. It's pathetic, in my opinion. I want to know what I'm joining, you know? I want to see the role playing style of the members. I want to see how the Admins act/react to situations. If I can't see that, then what's the point? I can find a site just as good, probably better, somewhere else, where I actually can see the forum.

Quite frankly when I visit a board; I like to read the plot, rules and a few character applications. These aren't for bad things. They let me get a feel for the site. I mean if I can't read the rules and plot? Why would I want to join it? For the character applications I like being able to see them and get a feel of what they expect from their character applications.

Thats why on the board I'm admin on. We let the guest see mostly everything. Sure some parts of the in character world we don't let them see it as well its useless if your a guest. Though all the important places we let them see. The character applications, relations, rules, plots, advertise and the bulletin board.

Guest are allowed to post an advertisement in the advertise section without having to join. Our only place we require to be a member to post is for affiliation.

StC is viewable by guests, but only members can post. And I don't have an advertising forum.

So I think that keeps spambots out quite nicely. Well, it has so far, anyway.