Forum with registered users

[AltforNorge]

I clearly see the pros with forums for only registered users. However my experience from many forums, both work-realated and leisure-/hobby-related is that whenver this is implemented, there is a drastic reduction of contributions. Sadly this has also happened to this forum. Maybe one help would be to start again the discussion; did we surrender or not in june 1940?

[Bob Pearson]

I agree with 'Alt For Norge' sentiments. Since registration was introduced there seems to have been a marked decrease in the numbers of people responding to items posted. This situation is difficult to resolve as pre-registration there were odd and offensive postings being made by people just out to annoy and offend others. However, it would appear from the 'views' numbers recorded that fewer folk, since registration, are now visiting the forum, which is not good for debating or for finding further information on Norway furing WW2.

There is no easy answer, but debating this topic openly may lead to something more positive for all of us.

Kind regards,

Bob Pearson

[Admin]

Well, this was taken in consideration when we decided to change our forum. We thought it was too much job trying to delete every spam message and do it 24/7. Almost every day, I got personal mails from differnet people that was offended by the messages on our forum which Bjørn or I had not yet deleted.
The spam was of such pornographic nature that we had to do something drastic.
An open forum is always the best, but due to the heavy spam we felt the damage became too unbearable. We started to loose visitors the last few months of our old forum due to this. We have checked other forums on the bigger historical sites and all of them have the new type of forums with registration, we where among the last ones to leave the old , open forum style!
Having said this, the summer is not the best time to try to recover a forum to its glory days. Hopefully we will see an increase in visitors in august-september.
Kurt

[Bob Pearson]

Hi Kurt,

There was no criticism intended as I can see there was no easy solution. The offensive postings were exactly that and the only way to cure that issue was through registration, but that very process does put off many people. I can see that you are damned if you and damned if you don't. If a way could be found to attract more writers/postings to the forum then that would be a very good way forward for us all.

Does anyone have any ideas that could be considered?

Bob

[AltforNorge]

As Bob clearly says: He sees the pros. So do I. My reason for posting is that is has some cons also. One of them is reluctancy to register. The only solution is to conctact earlier contributors and urge them to register. NUAV is to important to go into the sunset.

[AltforNorge]

This "urging" to register, must be we, users' job. We cannot make this the job of the moderators.

[Admin]

Now, I see this as a problem that can be overcomed. I do belive that people are afraid that the information they provide us with registration will be misused (Using all the e-mail adresses to send spam, etc.) I can promise we will not use the information for anything else than to contact the visitor if he or she has won a prize or if we have urgent news about Nuav.
Take a look at Uboat.net, they have had forum with regsitering for a long time, they have thousands of visitors and posters, so we are in no way afraid that Nuavs forum have to close down. This is just a temporary situation.
Kurt

[AltforNorge]

I hope you are right, regarding users coming back again. I can also confirm Adminst sayings that the registration will not be misused. It would be the death for the forum if that happened.

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