# Since when was sign in required to view posts?



## frankthedm (Nov 8, 2010)

Since when was sign in required to view posts?


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## Walking Dad (Nov 8, 2010)

*Not able to open threads while logged out*

Currently I have to be logged in to view any 'Play By Pos Games' thread, but have no problem viewing the 'Meta' section. Is this intentional?

It was no problem yesterday.


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## IronWolf (Nov 8, 2010)

Walking Dad said:


> Currently I have to be logged in to view any 'Play By Pos Games' thread, but have no problem viewing the 'Meta' section. Is this intentional?
> 
> It was no problem yesterday.




Yep.  Same here and for threads in the General forum and I assume others as well.


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## Morrus (Nov 8, 2010)

It's a week-long data gathering experiment.  We want to see how it affects various stats to give us a better idea of user behaviour.


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## IronWolf (Nov 8, 2010)

Looks like FranktheDM started a thread near the same time.  His has a response from Morrus:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/meta/296642-since-when-sign-required-view-posts.html


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## Walking Dad (Nov 8, 2010)

Could you then make an option to mark a subscribed thread as unread?

I usually open my subscribed threads in tabs after logging out. This way I can choose to answer later, if I need to re-check a book or something without them loosing their unread status.


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## dvorak (Nov 9, 2010)

Morrus said:


> It's a week-long data gathering experiment.  We want to see how it affects various stats to give us a better idea of user behaviour.




Silly me, I must have missed the announcement of the experiment. Now where exactly is it posted other than scrolling down to the Meta section?

Thank you


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## Elephant (Nov 11, 2010)

Morrus said:


> It's a week-long data gathering experiment.  We want to see how it affects various stats to give us a better idea of user behaviour.




Here's another vote for killing this experiment.  I find it really annoying.

(and on a sidenote - strange that I stumbled on the experiment after weeks away from the site!)


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## IronWolf (Nov 11, 2010)

It's only for a week for Morrus to gather some data.  I'm actually surprised that so many people with established accounts don't browse the forums while logged in.


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## chriton227 (Nov 11, 2010)

IronWolf said:


> I'm actually surprised that so many people with established accounts don't browse the forums while logged in.




For me it depends on where I am.  If I'm on a public or business computer, I usually don't want to enter my credentials because I don't want them saved or grabbed by a key logger or anything of the sort.  I also frequently read the forums on my phone while waiting to pick up one of my kids from their activities, it has problems saving the log in, and it's a pain to log in using the phone, especially if i use a password that has any non-alphanumeric characters.


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## MarkB (Nov 11, 2010)

chriton227 said:


> For me it depends on where I am.  If I'm on a public or business computer, I usually don't want to enter my credentials because I don't want them saved or grabbed by a key logger or anything of the sort.  I also frequently read the forums on my phone while waiting to pick up one of my kids from their activities, it has problems saving the log in, and it's a pain to log in using the phone, especially if i use a password that has any non-alphanumeric characters.




Much the same for me. I enjoy browsing the forums during my lunch hour at work, but I don't want to enter my username and password there - our usage restrictions would forbid me from posting messages from my work PC in any case, so there'd generally be no reason to do so. This week's experiment has been rather annoying.


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## Baumi (Nov 12, 2010)

That's extremly annoying. I always clear my cache after closing the browser so I would have to sign in every time I go to enworld.


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## Maggan (Nov 13, 2010)

chriton227 said:


> For me it depends on where I am.  If I'm on a public or business computer, I usually don't want to enter my credentials because I don't want them saved or grabbed by a key logger or anything of the sort.  I also frequently read the forums on my phone while waiting to pick up one of my kids from their activities, it has problems saving the log in, and it's a pain to log in using the phone, especially if i use a password that has any non-alphanumeric characters.




Yep. So the result was that I just went "huh?" and closed the browser. Figured it was some sort of error that would sort itself out, and that I could do without ENWorld for the time it took for it to be fixed. 

/M


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## Elephant (Nov 13, 2010)

IronWolf said:


> It's only for a week for Morrus to gather some data.  I'm actually surprised that so many people with established accounts don't browse the forums while logged in.




I usually do browse the forums while logged in, but in this case, it had been long enough since last time I logged in that the login cookie had expired (or been cleared; I do that once in a while).


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## Blood Jester (Nov 14, 2010)

Just one more person to say "Very annoying".

I have spent the past week avoiding the site because I thought this was a permanent change which made me choose to stop using the site.

I just decided to check meta to see if there was an explanation for the change, so now I know.  I also know how it would change my "user behaviour" if it becomes permanent.


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## evileeyore (Nov 15, 2010)

Elephant said:


> Here's another vote for killing this experiment.  I find it really annoying.
> 
> (and on a sidenote - strange that I stumbled on the experiment after weeks away from the site!)





And here's one to keep the experiment rolling.


Other people's annoyances make me happy in ways nothing else really does.


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## the Jester (Nov 15, 2010)

dvorak said:


> Silly me, I must have missed the announcement of the experiment. Now where exactly is it posted other than scrolling down to the Meta section?




Wow- I find the experiment "theoretically annoying," being as I just leave myself logged in here, but I have no illusions that I am owed some kind of announcement whenever the site owner wants to check things out a little.

C'mon folks, having to log in to browse ENWorld may be slightly aggravating, but it certainly isn't kicking your puppy or anything.


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## Obryn (Nov 16, 2010)

dvorak said:


> Silly me, I must have missed the announcement of the experiment. Now where exactly is it posted other than scrolling down to the Meta section?
> 
> Thank you



ENWorld now uses a special HTML5 functionality for displaying the work-log.  You just need to hit Control-W to check out the latest work on the site.

-O


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## Blood Jester (Nov 19, 2010)

Obryn said:


> ENWorld now uses a special HTML5 functionality for displaying the work-log.  You just need to hit Control-W to check out the latest work on the site.
> 
> -O




*yawn*
That isn't even a remotely new troll.

If you don't have a real response to another user, stay out of the discussion.


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## Piratecat (Nov 20, 2010)

Enough with the hostility, on all sides. Sheesh. I really need to say this down here in Meta?


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## Elephant (Nov 20, 2010)

Darn, and I was just gearing up to flame the folks who were enjoying my discomfort.

(seriously, guys.  Would it kill you to have a little empathy?)


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## frankthedm (Dec 28, 2010)

And the problem is back gone. Was odd the issue showed up, but I'm glad it is gone again.


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## frankthedm (Apr 2, 2011)

The problem is back.


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## Morrus (Apr 2, 2011)

We're getting an insane amount of spam right now, so I'm locking things down tightly for a few days in the hope it'll help (I had to reduce over 1000 blog entries one at a time yesterday - all spam, posted in the space of an hour or two).


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## Walking Dad (Apr 2, 2011)

Have they not to 'log in' to spam, anyway?

The private setting annoys me a bit, because I usually log out while my subscription page is open, open my subscriptions and log in again. This little trick usually allows me to check my subscriptions without marking them as read. If I cannot post instantly, I don't loose the notification.

Is there somewhere a 'mark as unread' option?


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## IronWolf (Apr 2, 2011)

Walking Dad said:


> The private setting annoys me a bit, because I usually log out while my subscription page is open, open my subscriptions and log in again. This little trick usually allows me to check my subscriptions without marking them as read. If I cannot post instantly, I don't loose the notification.
> 
> Is there somewhere a 'mark as unread' option?




I didn't see an unread option, but I may have overlooked it.

Could you create a new folder named pending or ToDo and then if you read a subscribed thread but don't take action on it you could move it to the ToDo folder.  Once you've taken action on it, move it back to the subscribed folder?  Takes a couple of clicks, but might help you organize your PbP threads between awaiting action and not awaiting action.


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## Elephant (Apr 3, 2011)

Morrus said:


> We're getting an insane amount of spam right now, so I'm locking things down tightly for a few days in the hope it'll help (I had to reduce over 1000 blog entries one at a time yesterday - all spam, posted in the space of an hour or two).




O_O

That's a pretty nasty spam problem!  Could you implement a simple captcha for posting to help prevent it?  Something like "type the answer to 2+2 in the box" -- sure, it's easy to write a script to answer that along with adding spam to other fields, but it stops anything that wasn't customized to attack enworld.org.

... I hesitate to suggest it because answering captchas like that is always an annoying extra step, but if the spam is *that* bad, maybe it's necessary...


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## wedgeski (Apr 4, 2011)

captcha's don't annoy me in the slightest as long as the bloody things are readable. When they have a wibbly-wobbly graphic with a mix of upper and lower-case letters in some serif font, and you don't know whether the spaces are critical or not, it just becomes an exercise in frustration.


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## Morrus (Apr 4, 2011)

wedgeski said:


> captcha's don't annoy me in the slightest as long as the bloody things are readable. When they have a wibbly-wobbly graphic with a mix of upper and lower-case letters in some serif font, and you don't know whether the spaces are critical or not, it just becomes an exercise in frustration.




That's the biggest problem with them.  As bots get smarter, the images have to get more and more illegible - until it reaches the point where the system defeats its own purpose by being too difficult for humans.


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## GandalfMithrandir (Apr 4, 2011)

I'm fine with needing to sign in, as I sometimes browse at school, but it's half-blocked by the school tech admin (very easy to get around the block), and I could get in trouble for being on during the day anyway, and at home I stay logged on all the time so its not a problem for me, the only problem I can see with it for EN World is that it might deter new users if they couldn't look at any of the threads and stuff to see if they want to join the site or not.


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## Walking Dad (Apr 4, 2011)

I still think the registration should become more difficult, not each log in.


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## Morrus (Apr 4, 2011)

Walking Dad said:


> I still think the registration should become more difficult, not each log in.




Each login isn't difficult - it's just username and password.

We're working on making registration more difficult - see the Human Verification thread in this forum.


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## Walking Dad (Apr 4, 2011)

I thought it would be this way  Thanks for the confirmation!


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