dealtn wrote:stooz wrote:Hi all,
We have cleared this up a little as there was some left over setup from its predecessor.
You can now thank in the current affairs board, member or not of any strange group you can find in your profile.
Well, thats the thoery. PLease let us know if it isn't working right!
Am I missing something?
I thought we had a "Polite Discussions" a place where thanking wasn't allowed. It contributed to bad behaviours.
PD was made a sign up only Board so participants could take place on debating, thanking, and whatever behaviours.
Then PD disappeared. Then "Current Affairs and News" arrived, but with no thanks, but accessible and visible to all. Now "CAN" is to have thanks.
It seems the kind of behaviours, and frankly squabbling, are crossing over to other Boards and in my opinion spoiling the site which is after all labelled "Shares, Investment and Personal Finance Discussion Forums".
If i'm honest I have lost much motivation in participating here and suspect I am not alone.
IIRC the reason why Polite Discussions was made a sign-up board was stated to be because advertisers weren't happy about their products being associated with some opinions expressed and/or bad behaviours indulged in on the board. Those associations primarily appeared in search results, so if Polite Discussions posts were prevented from appearing in search results, the problem would be solved. And those posts could be prevented from appearing in search results by making them invisible unless the user had signed up for the board - which the search engine bots wouldn't have done.
It seems fairly clear to me that the search engine bots are now being prevented from finding Current Affairs & News posts by some other means. I know there are a number of technical ways for website owners to put 'stop sign' files at various points on their sites, that advise automated processes not to investigate the site beyond those points (*), and I presume something of that kind is now being used. It would certainly explain the observation made earlier in the thread that Current Affairs & News posts aren't appearing in Google search results even for users who can see those posts.
So I think that the main reason (and quite possibly the
only significant reason) for the signing-up requirement's existence has vanished, and what's happened here is just that stooz has tidied up some loose ends remaining from its former existence. And something you're missing is that when it existed, the sign-up requirement was always about controlling the
visibility of bad behaviour, not about controlling the bad behaviour itself - the site's method of doing the latter is instead moderation.
And finally, if you consider that the Current Affairs & News board is spoiling your enjoyment of the site, there is a solution available to you: don't read that board! This is something you can set up for yourself by using the subscription and/or bookmarking facilities of the software, though I believe that does have the disadvantage that those facilities don't affect the "New posts" and "Unread posts" quick links - so it might involve a change in reading habits. Or if that's too painful to contemplate, you could ask for a facility to hide selected boards from the results of those quick links. I see nothing in principle preventing such a facility from being implemented, but I have little idea how much work it would be in practice, so I don't know how likely it is that you'll get it - except that if you don't ask, it seems highly unlikely! (One thing I would suggest: if you do ask for it, do so in a new thread with an appropriate subject - much more likely to come to people's attention than buried near the end of a thread whose subject says it's about the 'thanks' facility...)
(*) Don't ask me for details beyond that very loose description - I don't know them!
Gengulphus