Should Guests be allowed to post on the forum?
 

Sometimes guests come to the forum simply to intimidate other users or spam the forum. So this brings the question, should guests be allowed to post on the forum? Please vote in the poll as moderators will be taking this into consideration. There are many many other forums that require someone to be a registered member before they can post on their forums. Doing so helps to filter out the Trolls that pass thru the forums.

BTW a Troll just answered to this thread. lol :D Lowlife creatures they are! :rolleyes:

Good for you, LOTR for bringing up this topic. Because I too, have come across many 'trolls' in this and other message boards and I would like to see the LimeWire Forum be free of them!:D

How did a troll post ... It seems guests are not able to post at the moment .... any way I'm with you both. LOTR seems like you just had an evening of it!!

banning guests is a good idea, along with the actual verification of e-mail. i believe the [img] code should be turned off next.

Banning guests should lower the quantity but increase the quality posts on the forum.

On the down side, people that don't know how to register and those who are in a hurry will suffer.

But as a mod, things should be easier for us ;)

are you going to upgrade vbulletin? i think the newest version is 3. something

We would like to. This is not under our current control, the administrator of the server is currently hard to reach. The priority is to upgrade vbulletin to 2.3.7 to fix many security bugs in 2.3.4 used currently. Of course a vbulletin 3.5 beta would be most appreciated for us mods ;)

yes that would be very nice.. i believe blocking remote [img] would help too.

blocking [img] works definately

No I believe they should be blocked from posting it generally seems to me that allowing guest to post only makes things more difficult. It is harder to track a person who has a problem if they are a guest. And most of the jerks (other than myself when I am grumpy) are guest.

Many, many forums are presently registered posting only. It rather simplifies a few things, though as the master troll who posted previously has noticed, there are still ways around for a creative soul. That just leaves the idiots, which is a good place to start anyways

lol i dont consider myself a master troll. there are people better than i am. have you ever been on a site where it asks for you to type in random letters, numbers, or a random phrase. trolls figured out how to make automated crapflooders which would register loads of usernames and post on a board with proxies, eventually filling up the forum with nonsense.


i've seen forums get trolled so bad the admins just closed the board down for a few days and turned off the new user registration. the official slipknot forum for the band is closed because of people making fun of slipknot for complaining about burger king's chicken fries commercial and slipknot's "likeness" of the fake band on the commercial.


watch out if you want to start a band because if you wear masks and those masks have dreadlocks, kabuki mask, or anything else "like" slipknot, you will get sued.

i definantley think onley registerd users should be able to poast, the volume of crap that the "trolls" put on here is getting redickulus, i remember about 2 weeks or so ago the one guy was putting a poast up every minut.

and i know some of you may accuse me of having some of these "troll" caracteristics and i wont lie by saying i enjoy a good argument once in a while , but dont forget that every poast i make i at least make an attempt to address the problem/subject of the thread in a humorus but still verry helpful way.

PS has anybody els noteced that all our signature pictures are corrupted?? i think maybe the sever for GF may have a drive with a bad sector or maybe a virrus or somthing....

You may need to re-load your avatar. The forum software was recently updated. This might have caused some issues.

Yep I reloaded mine & it seems to be fine now. ;)

Well, on the forum I'm on we have a guest section where thats the only place a guest can post, but if they register they can post anywhere except a staff part. We have the guest board so that guest's can ask questions or concerns about the site if they don't know to join up or not, it helps a lot

They could put that in the guest section, like the read before sign up and post any questions or concerns before sign up there maybe?

Keep Guest Out
 

Guys,

I totally agree that guest should be kept out of the forum, there have been creeps, perves posting disgusting pictures, flamers and other idiots.

If banning guest brings an end to that sort of nonsense then I'm all for it.



UK Bob

Hmmm I only came across one and he was a registered user yesterday .. hopefully banned now:D

Come on Bob give them just a little corner ... Like the smoking area I saw at an airport the other day ... like a quarantine area:)

Ahh Hobo

A small corner for guests, maybe a good idea as long as they behave themselves.

You know as well as I do that guests asking for help in a sensible manner will get that help. Both you and I have bent over backwards to not only provide help but also explain things in a non-technical manner. Some of which has been appreciated and others where we get no feed back, I put that down to lack of common courtesy. We have also had arrogant guests that somehow believe we owe them our time and effort.

Becoming members may not put an end to all this but it would certainly cut down on the nonsense we sometime have to put up with.



UK Bob

PS. Gosh, I do sound angry, maybe even a touch arrogant, I must be loosing my marbles:confused:. I'm going on a "marble" hunt to recapture some of my lost brain cells:). Later.

well, I'm outnumbered, but that's OK :)

I liked the guest posting usually, since I hate sites that require registration. Repeated guests were quickly found they had better feedback when posting as registered users.

Also, in the LW beta forum, experts from other platforms/clients sometimes used guest posting to drop quick and useful notes about how LW was behaving. I imagine they were subscribed to so many sites that the guest posting was a welcome courtesy to them.

As far as trolls are concerned, the usually went away hungry after providing us regulars with some amusement, so the past practise seemed to work pretty well (other than the flood this summer).

A sandbox for guests would be welcome, and/or enough nag screens listing rules and faq's/stickies to discourage repeated use of guestness.

If a guest had to click through 4 or so AGREE screens before getting to the text box, that would be useful to educate legitimate guests before posting, but would be irritating enough to encourage registration.

Cheers

honestly, i dont really care, but if it were my board, i would have that requirement.

Wow, I wanted to say "yes" to letting guests post messages...but it never occurred to me that people would use a message board/forum to be rude & nasty.
Guess that changes my answer to "no"!!
(Hey & I promise I will never be rude!!!! LOL)

I think guests should definitely not be allowed to snopp on limewire. they should mind their own business & us members only should come into this forum, nosy buggers! if they don't have limewire they should go to their own forums. They have no businesss coming here.:cool:

i think a seperat corner for unregistered users would be a good idia and a compromise.... so it would be there own little cesspool that they can do whatever they want and say whatever they want (including trolls) without us (registerd non idiot users) having to put up with any of there crap. and there would be some managment to remove piracy talk /diskusting pictures from it but it wouldent be done religiousley , so the new users would have to just put up with the crap untill they register...

and this is just about the forums...has nothing to do with limewire...WTF are you talking about fwapj??

and gusts should definantley be allowed to at least VIEW what wev poasted here...after all it is largley a PC/p2p help forum.

if you want somthing to be kept private , thats what email and PMs are for....

CRT you mention "diskusting pictures". I thought to were going to do something about this burger, it's really looking rather stale ... you .... could throw it into the cesspool as nourishment :) :D

Needs Bacon :D :D

I Run 10 SMF forums and never allow guest any more then a teaser or two.

And even then I mod the first few posts.


Cozmo

60 to 80% increase in memberships/month since the changes. Pity I don't get 10 cents for each one. http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoti.../happy/028.gif http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoti.../happy/019.gif
Seems to be slightly better quality posts (certainly responses) ... & better placed/located generally as an improvement. Instead of the erratic posting of them previously. It's at least a major improvement though more improvement would be prefered. lol :D ie: looking at forum rules & correct section to post & stickies which have 80% of most answers before posting would be prefered for the newbies.

Let's all just pay the price for this great site. UsedPaypal and have no problems. Keep up the good work guys
thankYou

paypal??.....errm...this is a free site...

CRT, ... If you lokk at LOTR's post, he's thinking of charging 10 cents membership fee for the forums:) .... I don't think it would work ... tha would be just another scam :D:D:D

sup lotr... i agree with hobo it would be another scam lol ... seriously 10 cents on a credit card or would u pay it in the mail... XD i'd be retarded if i signed up on a forum for 10 cents... id give em a loony and ask for the change if it was by mail XD anyway this will probably be my last post so peace out... i dont understand why lotr just didnt delete the useless posts instead of the entire thing but ooooooook thats his/her (not sure no offence just not sure cuz its a forum...) decision and some guests are pains but maybe they dont want to waste 5 minutes of there life (it could kill them!) to sign up for a forum they'll use once or twice....

btman.. we occasionally have a little lightheartedness on the forum, I hope you will allow us that. LOTR knows I was not actually accusing him of scamming ... and you know too. I have seen people get on the wrong side of LOTR and they tend to come off badly. and I'm sorry you seem to have done this. I was beginning to warm to your style, although I have to admit that your form of English made about as much sense to me at times as my form of French did to you LOL :)

Lod of the Rings
 

Yes , u are and u had to start somewhere.This isnt a yacht club you know and we aint spammers.Give us a hand and youll feel better today.

It has been my experience that larger forums get more spammers and trolls, who
take advantage of guest posting with no consideration to the community.

If you want to allow it, restrict them to a single forum and be prepared to delete
a lot of posts.

That is an interesting concept. I do believe there'd be a lot of work for the mods to keep such a forum in check. It would require constant supervision. :eek:

If they're corraled into one forum it's not so bad.

i just registered because i know u dont like guests and i have a problem but now i have a problem where im registered in so many forums i cant remember them all:)

This forum represents a cross platform & multi-program approach to the gnutella network. Most try to keep in harmony with the gnutella development & ideals.

The most popular is Limewire Forum sections but the others can be found here https://www.gnutellaforums.com/

Guests in the forum
 

This (to Me) is a median to learn, explore, and SHARE, not be intimidated, or disrespectful to other users........

I second Kex's point. Have a forum where guests can post and block them from everything else. Then the desperate or technologically challenged would be able to get quick answers and the other areas would be more secure.

I had to join to post a problem but, although I can see your point, it would have been easier if I, as a guest, submitted my post via a mod or admin go between. I run two forums and both are sealed against guests due to excessive spamming. Incontinent kids with acne who have nothing better to do! I voted yes, but with restrictions.

I can help you with those spammers.
I just chased them away from a few forums. ;]

I think if they are genuinely in need for help give them an opportunity, but if they are just spamming then put special rules in place. However, registering a user name is simple and of course is free, until you are banned from using the forum.

guests to post or not?
 

no they should not. how can we trase the troll otherwise?

The last 5-6 unregistered users to post on these forums were all spammers. Spammers are a part of today's world unfortunately. And there's more & more of them all the time. They will try to use & abuse any form of communication network that they can get into.

I say no ,it takes 2 minutes to register.If you have a prob and want advice you will.Hello by the way

I say no to the idea of letting guests post, since I agree with the fact that too many "trolls" have posted too much crap on the forums (not just here, mind you, in ALL forums I've been in). While the idea of having a guest area on the forum MIGHT be a good idea (like any good idea), it CAN be abused/misused by people who have too much time on their hands and want nothing more than to cause trouble for those who genuinely need help. I've read numerous posts by people who supposedly wanted help, but instead got what they claimed was no help at all. I say those folks shouldn't even bother posting in a forum if they're not going to be the least bit nice about it.

:Smilywais: I began as a "Guest", and the reason I registered was the patience, and knowledge of the moderators, guests, etc. Also, the information in the forums (I learned a lot of new things about bitzi, junk filters, etc., yesterday by cruising the forums) , there is always so much to learn, and it is by browsing. If people are abusing this fine median to the extent of which I am reading, and the problems caused by these "spammers", I vote NO.

I am totally new to this and I have a lime wire problem.....my problem is this..I can find the forum about my problem, but I don't know the basics about making a post.....how do I post my problem so that I can get responses...I see some great ideas, but would like to throw my problem out there and start geting replies to my question....thanx in advance