Welcome to- The Fountain Pen Community!

DWL · ***

Question for the community

DWL · ***

I'm leaning towards yes. We have so much to offer and share freely with the FP world at large, I dont see asking for everyone to register as too much.

jor412 · Vintage

I agree. It would be fun to get more visitors here. I like the down to earth, congenial atmosphere.

Scratch · Experienced

Personally I am not sure. What control do you have as Administrator as to what you can open up to browsers or members - for instance - can you section off various parts of the forum (ie Buying and Selling, Repair Workshop etc) and have them only open to registered members whilst having general parts of the forum available to all? This might entice browsers to join however if there is a blanket no access unless you register that would probably put me off. I think that a browser would want to get to know the general atmosphere of the forum before committing.

Roger

jor412 · Vintage

I did a lot fo fountain pen related searches on google and I wasn't able to read from most forums without joining. So I joined so I could access the information. It didn't put me off because I could always opt to just lurk and read.� smile

Frank · Admin

The thing is we have tried the register to read route before. Believe it or not, it lead to "spamming" issues.
A lot of bot activity resulted from trying to set up the board that way.

It seems like a good idea, but at the same time, it has kept visitors away (less people join). The people that did join in that period for the most part turned out to be "unwanted" here. DWL will recall that we tried this last year, and the two of us spent a lot of time in the admin panel deleting members/posts.

But hey, we can try it again!.....

Frank

Chthulhu · Rawr.

I'm opposed to the idea of forcing visitors to register before they can read on a forum such as this one, where nothing is really sensitive information. If there's some sort of premium content that can be isolated so that only registered members can reach it, or even know that it exists, then it does make sense.

Boards that let you read content but block any images embedded in that content *really* annoy me.

jor412 · Vintage

I have a different view of this. Yes, it can be slightly annoying to have to sign up to view certain images or read threads. But I've joined countless forums where I never posted anything or participated in any discussions. I reaped the benefits of free information, expert advice, and downloads, the cost of which was just my signing up. I think there is little commitment involved in signing up. I do not opt to receive emails except from administrators of the forum, and these are directed into a folder of my email account which I can check at my leisure. And gmail is great at filtering out spam, so the risk for me is nominal. In other words, in exchange for a wealth of information, I increase the membership/popularity of a forum and hopefully, contribute to its continued existence.

Trillium · Newbie

I am quite new here but I do have a little experience with the concept of creating members in hope of stimulating the community. I was involved with something like this idea with Lapidary Clubs.
what we ended up with was surplus of people who felt it their right to sway the steerage of the group while adding little to nothing of value.
I personally would prfeer an active , interested membership. In fact, it wouldnt be a terrible idea for a current member to be required to log in at least once a quarter to avoid being deleted.
Quality over quantity. Just my two cents. I'm just glad that this community is here and available!!