I know that nothing could be done without Dia, but what do you guys think if this forum only allowed posting by members. That way we'll avoid the problem of spamming as well as members posting without logging in, then double post: "Oops, that's me!" :D ;)

don't you think that most people who do read and post here are members - the spaming is a potential big problem, maybe better solved with software and the problem with loggin in - any post can be immediately edited by member who did not "log in"   Might take a tiny bit of effort, but it is easy to fix the "guest is me" problem when you post.

There are actually quite a few guests who post on the forum - or maybe a couple guests who post a lot, it's hard to tell - which is one of the reasons I'd appreciate a members-only forum. Some guests do sign their posts, but many don't, and it's somewhat annoying to be unsure whether you're talking to one person or several people.

I'd suggested this a while back, when we were getting people coming in and starting an argumentative thread (like "Spike sucks Bangel 4eva" ) just to stir up trouble. But it seemed the consensus at the time was that there were guests who for whatever reason don't want to sign up for an account. I don't really know what the big deal is, but for those people who want to remain anonymous, we continue to have guest posting.

We can discuss this again, I guess, when we have our meeting to spruce things up a bit.  I do think that there are several people who, for one reason or another, prefer to remain "guest" and I would hate to exclude them just to avoid the occasional pain-in-the-ass who wants to anonymously annoy people or start an argument.  I think the spam issue is a script issue - Dia would have to answer that question. I know she has some safeguards in place, but I suppose nothing is 100% foolproof is someone truly wants to spam.

One thing I'd like to revive, that we had at the old Bloodshedverse - which I doubt many of you remember - was a "getting to know you" feature when authors and readers could de-lurk and tell a bit about themselves. I forget what the section was called, but it was fun and gave you some sense of who you were talking to on the tag, or who was reviewing you. People said as much or as little as they wanted to - but at a minimum we got a feel for ages, locations, sexes, stuff like that.  It was fun to dip into it occasionally to see who new was popping up.

There ARE sections of the forum that are members only, however they don't seem to get very much use.

One of the main reasons that we have people who prefer to remain as "Guest" is that a lot of people post from work where they are unable to log in.

Yes, it really would make life much easier if guests were to sign their posts, at least that way you would have someone to address when responding...I honestly don't know why more people don't...it takes 2 seconds to write your name at the bottom of a post. And yes, it would also be wonderful if people were to use the 'Edit' feature rather than just adding more posts to say "Opps...." 

Isn't there a way to shut down - CLOSE - The Wish and  Doppelgandland thread?

Yes, there is... only the forum moderators can do it though--that is Dia and Akealalee. Akaelalee doesn't currently have internet access, and Dia is snowed under with work--hopefully she will get a chance to pop in over the weekend. There is nothing Patti or I can do.

Yeah, the reason most of the forum is open for guest-posting is what Always said about people posting from work where they can't/ prefer not to log in.

I can do something about the spamming though, either via a CAPTCHA/ quiz test like we discussed a while ago (that's the last resort though), or via some .htaccess settings. I'm implementing those bit by bit to see if one of them helps and to make sure that if one ends up locking out users I'll know which one. For now I've upgraded Slaymesoftly and Always to forum-mods so they'll be able to delete/close the threads in question. Once I'm through implementing all the spam protection stuff that doesn't affect the users, we'll see if I have to go with CAPTCHA for the guests or not.

As for people who post crap just to annoy you/us, I can't do much about those. Nothing would stop them from registering an account to cause trouble, even if the forum was members only - though I admit that most of them probably wouldn't bother. Locking out everyone who uses a PC they can't log in from just to maybe, hopefully get rid of some of the troublemakers sounds kinda extreme to me.

You can discuss it though, if it turns out more people are bothered by some kiddies posting how they like Angel better than Spike, than by some of our regulars being unable to post from work, I may reconsider.