[Philip Quinlan]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

My strong preference would still be to make the entire site invisible to anyone who is not logged in. Registration should remain free and easy, but those who want to view the site should have to be logged in to view it...I see absolutely no reason why we should want our work being displayed to anyone who casually wanders by. It really is a form of publication to allow that to happen

I must say I have often wondered about that too.

It seems to me you could prune as often as you wanted. Anyone wishing to retain their golden words of wisdom (either poetical or critical) could cut and paste them elsewhere at regular intervals (or every time they change).

And how come in this age the pruning process isn't automated?

Philip

[Roger Slater]

If the workshops were invisible to those not signed in, you could still have a home page providing a "guest" sign-in procedure to allow people to read the site but without posting privileges. That would allow potential new members to look around before deciding whether they want to register.

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Maryann

I very much agree with Roger’s suggestion that Eratosphere should be visible only to members who have logged on. As I said on Golias’s adjacent “Spider” thread this morning, “Running the site as if it were a kind of reality-TV show open to the passing eyes of the world, may not be such a good idea.” Though I know nothing about managing a web-site, the fact that Roger belongs to other sites that operate in this way suggests that it ought not to be too difficult for Alex to put it in place.

Kind regards

Clive

[Clive Watkins]

Since we seem to have two threads running in parallel on this topic, Golias's "Avoiding Spiders" thread and this, I want to draw attention to Rose's most recent post "across the way": "There are plenty of bad spiders out there that ignore robot tags. The only foolproof way to keep them out is to require a login." (I am certain Rose knows a whole lot more about such matters than I do....)

Clive

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Clive Watkins

Since we seem to have two threads running in parallel on this topic, Golias's "Avoiding Spiders" thread and this, I want to draw attention to Rose's most recent post "across the way": "There are plenty of bad spiders out there that ignore robot tags. The only foolproof way to keep them out is to require a login." (I am certain Rose knows a whole lot more about such matters than I do....)

Clive

Maryann,

I hope you have noticed the other thread. Steve C's post there is informative, and others have posted some responses that bear on your questions here. I am for an all-out approach: (1) use the tags in the headings the way Steve C suggests, (2) make the workshop forums accessible only to registered members, and (3) prune more often.

David R.

[Marybeth Rua-Larsen]

Thank you for raising the issue, Maryann. I join the chorus of those who would like their poems "gone" sooner. Just yesterday I deleted one of my poems in Met. It hadn't been commented on in two weeks and I've long been done with it, but it didn't meet the guidelines to be pruned this month, and I didn't want to burden you with asking (again) that it be removed. I know some people get upset when poems are deleted like that, but as grateful as I always am for the comments and critique, I don't feel I need to warn anyone that I'm deleting my own poem. Speeding up the pruning process would help avoid this problem.

As far a making this a "log-in" site? I wonder if I would have ever found this place or made a commitment to it if it had been "log-in only." I doubt it. If I couldn't have seen the quality of the poems without giving registration info., I don't think I would have stuck around. I spent months reading here before I joined. I don't think I'm alone in that, though maybe it isn't common. It feels kind of elitist to me (but perhaps I don't fully understand the system Roger wants to implement). I rarely comment at the Gaz, but I do read there often, and I'm not logged in when I do, so whatever system they have, it isn't the one people here are discussing (I don't think). I'll go along with whatever is decided, but I'd rather see how pruning more often works first, unless someone convinces me otherwise.

marybeth

[Roger Slater]

Marybeth, I also suggested that we allow for "guest" sign-ins. For example, anyone who is not a member could simply log in with the username "guest" and the password "password," and they would be able to read the entire site (although not post). So it would be easy for people to check us out before deciding to register.

The home page could say who and what we are, invite people to check us out as a guest, etc.

I hardly think it's elitist not to publish our unpublished work to the world until we are ready to do so, and on our own terms, any more than I think it's elitist to close my blinds to keep passers-by on the street from looking in the window. If people want to see me, let them ring my bell.

[David Rosenthal]

I just posted this in the other thread, but I think it goes here too (Maryann -- maybe the two threads should be merged, or one closed and referred to the other, since they really seem to get at the same issues):

I agree with Bob's idea of a guest login. Add that to the tags, the members only workshops, and the frequent pruning. I just googled a poem that was cut in the lat pruning -- it was right on top with the first line or two visible in the google summary and a link to the cached page with the whole poem. If Wiley is right that mags are rejecting based on this, I am very deterred from posting anymore.

David R.

[Shaun J. Russell]

I somewhat agree with Roger et al., but I can completely understand why the site is currently open (though read-only) to any who should happen by. I think a lot of newcomers would want to get a feel for the place prior to joining. It might seem like a very minor inconvenience to have to join a forum to see its contents, but I guarantee that you WILL see a decline in new membership. Which may or may not be a bad thing.

How about this: is there a possibility of making the three workshopping forums login-only alone, while having the rest of the forums open?

Edited to add: oh, like Rose mentioned in the other thread. I didn't see that.