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Greetings to the Baths of Caracalla. Please feel free to discuss freely in this area, including topics which pertain to the forum itself, any security matters, or non-historical matters as you'd like.
You could have named this the Senate Chamber, but Baths of Caracalla works too. This forum should have a moderator though if it is going to allow free and open discussion of the forum. We don't need it now as the membership is still small, but in time you might as discussions here might disintegrate into arguments etc…..I nominate Stumpfoot for this role as he is the most active member here and obviously appreciates this forum deeply. I have come to respect Mr. Stumpfoot and cannot see anyone being more worthy than he if you decide to add to the staff here. 🙂
You could have named this the Senate Chamber, but Baths of Caracalla works too. This forum should have a moderator though if it is going to allow free and open discussion of the forum. We don't need it now as the membership is still small, but in time you might as discussions here might disintegrate into arguments etc.....I nominate Stumpfoot for this role as he is the most active member here and obviously appreciates this forum deeply. I have come to respect Mr. Stumpfoot and cannot see anyone being more worthy than he if you decide to add to the staff here. 🙂
Thank you Donnie or the kind words! 🙂 Your right, I do like the forum and enjoy our discussions here. I also believe that given some time this will be a popular watering hole for folks who appreciate the past.On another note I think I must have espn. As I sat down to log on (this not an exaggeration) I was thinking back to someone who posted an idea about having an off topic forum and at the time I wasnt sure I liked the idea, but I thought well maybe having one will help draw some new members, so I thought I would make the suggestion tonight and see what happened, looks like it has been done! And I think it is a good idea!
Donnie, the Senate Chamber name isn't a bad idea. I'll put it under consideration (the “Baths” was the first thing that really came to mind to represent the exclusive VIP idea). And perhaps with the ranks I can have a legend somewhere so people know what they are easily enough. For example, I don't know how many people know which is higher – the rank of optio or signifier. I tweaked this board a bit so that guests and Auxiliaries can see that this board exists but not access it. This wasn't possible via the standard SMF setup but I was able to find the tweak mentioned by someone on the SMF forum.Also, perhaps I should change the description of this board to de-emphasize the open discussion nature. While off topic stuff is fine, I think the idea was to have a place where things can go that weren't really best in the Announcements area. The post about the Trojan Horse was attracting too many people searching for "c:u.exe" and so sort of as a security precaution I wanted to hide that from the search engines. Further, if we need to discuss marketing this forum or whatnot, this is the best place to do it. Of course, I don't want this area to take away from specific historical discussions that can populate other areas. I agree that Mr. Stumpfoot could be the board moderator (not that he'd have very much to do with these new responsibilities anytime in the near future....well at least until we surpass the 1000 member mark 🙂 ). By the way, keep the ideas coming in, as I appreciate the input.
Perhaps moderators are best on boards that I will open up to the public. The reason for moderators (at least at this point) is primarily to stop spammers from posting. A neglected forum is a spammy forum. I open certain boards up to the general public because I think it's easier for them to want to post without registering…..they don't feel committed to it so they might like it more. I have implemented some features to prevent spam to a certain degree. First off, when members of the public post, they have to bypass the CAPTCHA feature, which is simply that box that has letters and numbers is it that look all squiggly. The reasoning is that since bots can't read those very well they cannot bypass it and therefore can't post. Second, I have installed a feature so that guests can't post urls in their posts; the main reason that bots spam forums is to have backlinks to their sites which they hope will increase business. I think with these two functions, spam by guest posters will be cut down quite a bit. I have so far opened two forums (I think) to public postings - Early Colonies and I think General History. I wouldn't mind opening more if I think it will induce more people to post. In such circumstances I would need moderators to help out. While I can police the board myself, I think it's better having some additional eyes while I'm not here (contrary to popular belief, I'm not on this forum 24x7 🙂 ). So, do you all think we should open more boards to public posting? Yay or Nay? If so, which boards should I open up? Select few? Should I do it gradually? Or should I open them all up?
Keep it to a couple of forums. I wouldn't open up more than one topic specific forum at a time because then you might not get people to go on and register if they have less of an incentive to do so. It could go both ways I guess, but you want your most interesting topics reserved for registered users only IMHO.
Keeping it to a couple of forums is smart. It gives anyone interested a taste and if they like the feel of the boards then they can register (It's been a while since I have but I would have to assume it's not that painful) and post anywhere they like.
I do realize that people won't have an incentive to register if they can do everything that a normal member can. Right now I have it so that they can only post replies to posts that they started; they can't join in just any old thread. They also can't post polls and I think do some other things that members can. Of course they can't earn highly-coveted shekels. 🙂
Speaking of shekels, do you have any ideas for others items to add to the store? What about antique firearms?
No that is an el cheapo Colt AR 15 that is now with Kyplumber. Good looking nerd there holding it though huh? 🙂
