Suggestion: Guests Forum.

Well as my other post suggests in the chit-chat forum, GTN is getting alot of guest activity throughout the day, but yet, not many are taking the plunge and registering, i'd love to know why, and i think if a 'Guest Forum' was created with strict moderation, it might encourage guests to post freely without registering, which will give them the chance to A: be anonymous and settle into the community first before registering, and B: Give them the chance to provide GTN with feedback on why they aren't registering and what would encourage them todo so. This forum could be made private and only viewable to staff members and guests, and all posts / new threads could be posted into the moderation queue first.

Just a thought, maybe i'm just picking at straws, but with the guest count rising daily, who knows. Sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

This forum was made for open suggestions such as these, so thank you. I have thought about doing this but never with the spin that you gave it. I never thought about making it staff-only forum in which guests could post to. That is what has convinced me to go through with this idea. If I can't get to it today, I'll make sure to get it done over this weekend.

Fair enough. I do like the idea myself, and I am curious as to why lurkers are on the rise, but not registering. Nice idea, Joseph!

ive noticed that when looking at the whose online section you see people register but they dont seem to activate thier accounts. it once said 2 people were signing up but there was never an increase in members...

ive noticed that when looking at the whose online section you see people register but they dont seem to activate thier accounts. it once said 2 people were signing up but there was never an increase in members...

Originally Posted by Blank Planet

I'd say a majority of the guests that show up in the online list have been spiders and bots just crawling through our website. If that bot/spider visits the registration page, it will display it as though a guest is registering. There may have been a few guests that came and didn't register but I will work on increasing the guest appeal here. The guest forum is a surefire way to increase the chance a guest will signup.

ive noticed that when looking at the whose online section you see people register but they dont seem to activate thier accounts. it once said 2 people were signing up but there was never an increase in members...

Originally Posted by Blank Planet

I've also seen this numerous times, which is why the guest forum may encourage those users to post about why they arent registering and why they decide not to in the end. Maybe the 'Capture' feature is too hard to read for some, I know i had to refresh it 3 or 4 times to understand what the words said.

I've also seen this numerous times, which is why the guest forum may encourage those users to post about why they arent registering and why they decide not to in the end. Maybe the 'Capture' feature is too hard to read for some, I know i had to refresh it 3 or 4 times to understand what the words said.

Originally Posted by Joseph

I'm drawing a blank here, what is this 'capture' feature you speak of? Are you referring to the feature which syncs your gamertag with your Gamertag Nation account?

Sorry, 'Re-Capture' image verification.

Ah okay, I gotcha. I'll work on simplifying the registration process once I can get these other things done first.

an extra forum is certainly unusual, and rather unnecessary. there are a lot of guests on any type of forum, and several are bots as well. it's normal, and as long as traffic continues to rise, the percentage of visitors who register will increase too.

an extra forum is certainly unusual, and rather unnecessary. there are a lot of guests on any type of forum, and several are bots as well. it's normal, and as long as traffic continues to rise, the percentage of visitors who register will increase too.

Originally Posted by Obsidian Tides

If you view 'Who's Online' you'll notice that it states whether or not the connection is a crawl bot, or a user browsing. I'm counting the guests, not the crawlers.

I'm not understanding where you're comming from with the 'an extra forum is certainly unusual, and rather unnecessary'. I don't see how it's unusual, care to expand on this comment?

if you have a forum for guests, it defeats the point of having a regular forum. i've never seen something like that in place, mostly because it doesn't make any sense to do it.
and by bots, i also mean the viral marketing variety that register and spam website ads if there is no security in place. those appear the same as any guest until they are registered.

I think the whole CAPTCHA thing Eric has going is sound, and a good way of getting rid of bots. However, in the end, Guests can only choose to register. Maybe if Eric made a larger link to "Contact us", more guests would click and ask us what they want to know... and maybe give us their two cents as to why they are not joining... We don't want people to just use the guest forum and never register, but at the same time, we don't want to back guests into a corner.

indeed, all we can really do is make it easier to join or reach us. large links to register and things like that can help, but it's still not up to us.

I think that you've made some very valid points, OT. I'll hold off on doing this and put the time and effort into making registration more promising for our visitors.