forum content visibility to non-members

[amwt]

I had proposed in an earlier thread about making the forum accessible only after logging in, to better protect members' opinion from being indiscriminately crawled by search engines and to reduce risks of bot and spam. It has been suggested that this topic should be made into a poll. Please share your thoughts.

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[theymos]

That's a terrible idea. I always immediately leave a forum if I can't see the content, since I don't create an account until I want to post.

[bossweld]

I agree with theymos. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to find out and become involved with bitcoin, not make people jump through hoops to become part of the community.

I know there was some spamming on threads early yesterday, but has this been common up until now? Is it really enough of a problem at the moment that we need to take such a measure? Either way, using captchas would be a better way to stop spam than requiring a login.

As for "protecting members opinions", this is intended to be a public forum. If you don't want your posts indexed by a search engine, then I can only respectfully suggest that you don't post anything...

[Scarecrow]

Heck no, keep it open. This forum is a great ambassador for Bitcoin.

And why would you join if you couldn't see if the forum is any good?

[ih8censorship]

I agree too. I wouldn't have found this place if it wasn't for the information on it which was crawled by a search engine.

[riX]

I would also like to leave it open.

Maybe there should be a members only section?