Hi!

Today I see that I need to log in just to enter the forum.

This was not so yesterday.

Edited July 17, 200620 yr by Xpaninity

Yes. Guests access will be disabled.

Hi xper.

Would it have anything to do with the issue discussed in a previous topic?

Hi xper.

Would it have anything to do with the issue discussed in a previous topic?

Yes.

hmm is this a temporary thing or a new permanent 'feature'?

Also FYI you can still browse the 'Other Operating Systems' forum while NOT logged in

Another forum member sent me this:

Visitors banned from reading...

http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=78928

because of [?]...

http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=78584

IMHO:

This is not the right approach [to ban reading through forums by visitors who are not subscribed or by members who are not logged in] and does *not* solve the email harvesting problem.

One of the solutions would be in my opinion [probably by Invision Board owners/developers MSFN purchased the forum software from] to encrypt all email addresses and possibly all email body messages, especially the email headers.

This way in the future spammers won't be able to harvest emails/headers/etc anymore.

Forcing occasional visitors to subscribe just to read postings is the wrong thing to do.

Most free forums [similar in scope with MSFN] do not do this, they allow visitors to browse freely through all their public topics.

Sure, some restrictions need to be set in place to promote/increase subscription, attract new members, respect privacy and save server bandwidth, like anti-leech not-logged-in-member/visitor scripts for viewing pics/avatars, downloading attachments/member-only-files etc.

This change will probably result in bad publicity, reduced membership over time, and eventually decrease MSFN popularity among existing members, because a lot of people [like myself = this is the *only* forum I trust to post my projects, frequent and participate actively into since 2004, because I believe it is the *best* support software forum on the internet] found out about and liked MSFN only because they were allowed to read freely without having to subscribe.

Subscription should be the [potential] future member's choice, not forced by forum restrictions.

Please correct me if I'm wrong...

I thought MSFN was meant to be a *public* forum for everybody to find answers to their computing problems and exchange opinions freely.

Best wishes,

MDGx

hopefully this is just a temporary measure until the email dramas are sorted

I hope this will be solved soon too. I used to use Mozilla for "guest browsing" and Opera for "exposed browsing" and posting. This is no longer possible.

I could live with it if I could log in anonymously with Mozilla and log in normally with Opera, but that isn't possible because, if I log in anonymously with Mozilla, that setting is stored on the server so I'd be "ghosting" in Opera as well. It'd be better if the "log in as invisible" setting would be stored in a cookie exclusively.

But it's probably better for the public image of the board to reopen guest access as mentioned in posts above.

Edited July 20, 200620 yr by Tomcat76

Looks like visitor reading is back in business.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Best wishes,

MDGx