POLL: making the forum visible only to logged in members (or at least partly)???

[Simon]

I'm trying to make some sense out of what the real useage of the forum is because we have over 80 members here but only a handful of regular posters yet we seem to have a very large number of Australian and international browsers. I would like to know how many of the lurkers are actually registered members so I was thinking I might make the majority of the forum only visible to registered and logged in forum members. I often stay logged in so that every time I open the forum I'm already logged in and think others could do the same thing and then after I do this I will send out a group email or newsletter to try and sort out the ones who want to stay members from those who don't (because as some of you might know this forum evolved from a general gardening forum about 1 year ago to a specialty rose forum and the membership was given the option of either staying registered or not and the ones who decided they didn't want to be a part of a roses only forum replied and were deleted... the ones left either decided to stay or didn't bother replying... I'm going to do some advertising soon and I'd like to get a better picture of the real membership before I do this). So... before I make any sweeping changes check out the poll below and even make a suggestion. Poll will run for 20 days.

[Simon]

Five days left on this.

[wedge]

Hi Simon. I'm the new kid on the block here so i guess i shouldn't make any comments but the way i see it, new members should be encouraged to join and if the site is restricted in parts it may make it unattractive for new people to join ?? Just my thoughts !! I joined the site because i had a few problems and needed information. To that end i couldn't have joined a better site as i've found a wealth of information and the people are SO friendly !!

[Barbara B]

Hi,
I don't think you should restrict it. My computer sometimes plays up and I end up losing access to forums or lists because I don't stay logged in. Leave it as it is.
Barbara B

[Simon]

Please note: This is an old post and an old issue. The idea of having restricted viewing was very much a method of collecitng understandable data. It was tried for a time. I acquire the data I needed and the forum was again reopened. It was NOT intended to make it exclusive. This is very important to understand. It was meerly a data collection exercise for the reasons outlined in the very first post. I'll lock this post off as it is no longer an issue.