AutoHotkey Community

I'd like to hear your opinion about anonymous guest posting. I no longer post as registered member as much as it used be since some Guests have deliberately tried to offend me. I don't understand I posted useful scripts and why I have to get bashed. I've seen the same thing happening to other members. Do you think it should be allowed entirely? Some mods say that is your philosophy but I never heard it from you. So could you clarify it? My suggestion is to limit unregistered posts only on Ask For Help. What do you think?

The post below was moved here from another topic:

It could be company policy not allowing people to register or sign in, or you are just using an insecure connection and don't want to risk the chance to have your account being "hacked" by someone listening in (public wifi/hotspot). My vote would be to allow it, makes it easier to gain feedback. The mods are doing a good job keepings things under control as far as I can see, the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion.

Clearly the ability of guests to post has been abused in the past. However, I believe that allowing guests to post does more good than harm. (It seems impossible to prove or disprove this.)

In any case, it might not matter in the long run because if the forum is ever upgraded, it might not be feasible to continue to allow guests to post without a strong CAPTCHA, and it would have to be a type that hasn't already been circumvented by increasingly aggressive spambots. It's my impression that any strong CAPTCHA nowadays is also difficult for humans to solve, which if true would discourage people from posting as guests.

A CAPTCHA is avoided on this forum because not only is it an old version (which tends to deter spammers), but one that has been deliberately altered to detect and deflect most types of spambots. It seems possible to do something similar on a new forum, but it would require considerable time and research.

In my mind... (its not big). Guest have a usefull place in this community. Yess there are perhaps one or 2 that go around stiring the pot but eliminating guest wouldnt change that. they would just register an endless supply of accounts. I think the sole criteria for eliminating guest post would be that the MODS uniformly get tired of handling it. As to the guest attacks. Many of the MODs are anon(they dont advertise themselves) tho years has enlightened many to thier identities. It would be helpful when those identities are better known and offended persons can send a PM. either that or some sort email say abuse@autohotkey.com for these kinds of specific offences to be reported.

Again Chris i extend my enduring thanks to your little project here and the strength of your goals. I think there is a way to handle the guest problem without extreme measures and i applaud your effort to keep the forum open to all.

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I think it would also help to force guests to enter a name.

@fragman: how would that help?

One of my favourite things of this forum is that guests are allowed to post. This sure helped me back in 2007 when I was just a newbie.

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I agree with the part that is impossible to prove or disprove it. Can I ask what exactly you think is the benefit of allowing guests in other section of the forums besides Ask for Help? If it is to encourage new users to get help, allowing Guest posts only on the Ask for Help forum would work. Allowing guests in all forums provides a means to viciously attack others in a sneaky manner. My view is that old members who don't like new users to become active and popular are using such method. That prevents new comers from posting useful scripts and inspiring ideas. That also means to slow down or even stop the further growth of the community and the development of the program. If the current policy continues, I cannot introduce AutoHotkey to my friends because I don't want my friend to post his/her scripts on this forum and get rude replies.

So you would have to register to ask a question or make a suggestion about say a library posted in S&F section. If they can't they will post in ask for help, where it will (might) be missed by the OP of the library/function. There is a lot of value in all the questions & suggestions in the original thread, that would be lost.

This is exactly the point.

If someone abuses the guest post right, the effort for Mods scales 1:1, or in case of automated spam maybe even worse for Mods.

A further point against guest accounts is, when two lazy people - using guest accounts without typing any other nick- meet in the same thread. This leads to confusion, and even worse, can be easily abused to produce confusion.

IMHO, forcing to use a Captcha as a Guest will render Guest Accounts nearly useless. Guest Accounts are used by lazy people, typing a captcha Code everytime they want post makes it harder than registering. Btw, Guest Accounts do not provide any anonymity, as it doesn't change the way ip addresses are logged.

However, the Captcha Method may cover the UseCase of a User which just wants to ask one simple Question, and not diving into the community. Those people don't bring anything back to the community, and it is therefore questionable if we should support this behavior with guest behavior.

Registering to a community is a very basic process and know and understood by the very most people out here.



In the German Forum, we have taken notice of this lack of information, and decided to introduce a "Moderator" Entry in the Signature; as visible here: http://de.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopi ... 4535#74535.
Additionally, Mods in the German Forum do sometimes ask Posters to edit their Questions to a more qualitative form to be accepted. Guest can't edit their own postings. They can't correct misspelling etc.

I actually expected some progress in moving to phpbb 3.x where it is easy to configure a "Note Moderator about Post" Button above every post. So it is very easy to report postings. A further benefit of this solution is, that every Mod of the sub forum can see the abuse notification, and a reaction is guaranteed to be faster.

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There are (or have been) many helpful guests: a4u, bobo, gogo, to name a few, so I wouldn't call guests lazy. I rarely observe confusion myself, but that could just be me.

Lets not mix forum upgrade/features with the topic of this thread: allowing guest posts (with or without captcha) or not. I repeat my vote: allow it.

Most of those people have actual accounts that they use. They just don't want other members harassing them with PM's because they think they have the answer. At least that is my assumption.

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i have always had and used a registered account. I think everyone should. I am utterly against restricting guest in such a method. I suspect its only one or 2 people abusing guest. banning guest just creates a scenerio of an endless supply of bogus accounts created for the sole purpose of causing problems... you know what never mind do it ban them all ban me matter of fact just close the whole stinking thing down.

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