Making Some Non-Car Threads Public?

[IPreferDIY]

Is there a way to make some non-car threads public so that people can see them without signing in? My exercise and eye alignment threads, for example, are intended to help people, but the limited audience is kind of disappointing, and I’m not really interested in signing up with other sites.

[IPreferDIY]

bump

[gadget73]

There isn't any way to alter permissions on specific threads, its all set based on the forum they are posted in. Most of them are publicly visible anyway so they should be viewable to anyone.

[IPreferDIY]

One possibility that came to mind is creating a separate forum for public interest issues viewable by non-members. I recall CVN having a "Lizard Lounge" that non-members could see and a "Smoking Lizard Lounge" that only members who signed in could see. (I'm not aware of them having something like "The Battlefield" requiring additional permission, but I do recall at least one thread being moved from the non-member forum to the member-only forum.) An issue that would arise for particular existing threads is consent of people who had posted, so starting from scratch would probably be best if it can be done.

[sly]

I think the idea here is to have a public facing OTB subforum to move the threads to since OTB is members only.

[IPreferDIY]

I think the idea here is to have a public facing OTB subforum to move the threads to since OTB is members only.

I don’t know much about the technicalities and jargon, but something like that. Basically a ‘cleaner’ version of OTB that can be seen by non-members. I recall at least one thread relating to a class action, and that would be another example of something worthy of a wider audience. With the consent issue, it might be better to say “to make new threads in” rather than “to move the threads to”.

BTW, when I tried to post a similar response shortly before this one, I got the following error message: “An unexpected error was returned: 'User grandma_vbulleti already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections' ”. Edit: then the prior response showed up after I posted this one, so I deleted the prior one.

[sly]

Yeah... Looks like you may have found a server issue. We were probably getting crawled by a search engine.

[kishy]

FWIW, not that there is a vote necessarily, but I would vote against making a publicly visible off-topic discussion area (especially if that entailed changing the visibility on the current one).

We are a car forum with a specific area of focus. I don't think it serves any particularly helpful interest to make our non-core-content be available to those who aren't signed in. Some considerations, not that they necessarily apply to or would concern all people:

• Opening up the visibility also allows opens the door to search engine indexing. Objectionable topics could cause us to be penalized in search engine results. Additionally, members with very distinctive usernames which they use elsewhere might not want their usernames showing up in search results closely connected to results for objectionable topics.
• Off-topic threads on hot-button issues could draw in new member registrations and posting activity who have no relation to our core content, which costs server resources and impacts the experience of our member base (and we already seem to operate near the limits of our host on a regular basis).
• I think we should aspire to build out our "high value" content - e.g. a knowledgebase, maybe a wiki, maybe a blogging platform to tell the stories of our cars - and publicly visible discussion of, for example, trying to disprove the existence of man-made climate change discredits us as a community. For clarity's sake, I have no problem with the discussion taking place, but I don't think we should be wearing it as our public presence, like a face tattoo of who you vote for when you walk into a job interview.
• Members may have adjusted their tone or openness to discuss certain topics with the specific knowledge that their post was not going to be publicly indexed, and as much as it is unrealistic to expect that something you put in a "somewhat public" place will never become "completely public", we still have an opportunity to protect that expectation anyway.
• A point that ties all the above together: once you put it out there, you can never take it back. Great caution should always be exercised when deciding to put something out in the public realm.

Therefore, my position is that our public visibility should be our core content.

And as an interesting aside, this subforum is visible to the public and I have some concerns about that as well.