I'm not advocating we split anything. Anyone who logged in would still see everything, same as now. I'm just talking about making it so people would have to be logged in to see some sections of the forums. That would also stop those sections from being indexed by Google, et al.

And like I said, this is a concern I've had from Day 1, but just something I decided to voice now.

Don't we like to live on the edge . This sort of thing is not about anonymity though. It's about protecting yourself.

Bai Shen, if this is a concern for you then take the following advice:
- ensure one cannot easily deduce your real life identity from your online profiles.
- only post stuff in the open that you either don't care about whether it can be seen by anyone and/or only post stuff that can't be tracked down to it comming from you.

Oh, I do. Which is why I'm still on the forums. I knew it would be like this when I joined. I'm just expressing my preference for change.

Okay, but how will making the general forums only visible to registered users change anything? Anyone can register after all.

Yes. Especially if it makes things easier and/or better for the people who are already here, since they're the only ones who actually matter.

Well, some of them.

As I said, it'll mostly prevent search engine indexing.

We (FtB) do not want search engines to stop indexing us. If someone does a search on something and they find us because of a discussion going on in the forums then all the better for us. The forums exist for the podcast, the podcast does not exist for the forums. The whole thing is designed to create an open, big tent community that welcomes all and gets as many people into the community as possible. Locking the forums down would go against that.

And I'm not saying that the forums shouldn't be indexed. I'm referring to the General Discussion area only. That's what would usually be called the off topic area and really doesn't have a lot to do with the podcast. The booter forumites are really a subset of those that listen to the podcast.

The RPG and other parts should definitely kept open and available, but does the average person looking for FtB really care about some forum election? Are you really going to lose out on anything by preventing stuff like that from being indexed?

I hope I'm coming across clearly. I'm not advocating anything to keep the core element of FtB from being shared. Or anything that would hurt the growth of the community.

You are pointing out one thread amongst hundrends, thoundands and yes, I want people who come and vist our community to see that. I want people to see how tightly knit we are. I don't want someone to find us while searching for an RPG topic and see that we have locked areas that are for members only. I don't want us to come off as cliquish. Internet communities have a rep for being havens for trolls and flame wars, we do not and I want people to see that if they come and visit.

Just a word of support. Well-handled and really the best solution.