I'm just wondering why the anonymous function of the bbs is? I mean why feel the need to hide? Is everyone so popular, they are afraid people will bombard them? Maybe if there was a chat feature or something, I could understand it, but without???

It's part of the UBB forum software and anonymous posting should have been disabled in all the various areas.

I think Ladmo is refering to browsing anonymously without showing up in the online users page, which is a user preference. I've gotten PMs before from people asking FAQ level questions, and if I were a more definitive source like a Tony or Mark Lord, I can imagine they'd be fairly frequent from people passing through and wanting a quick ansewer to something.

It's kind of fun to look and see who's on the BBS at any given time, but if someone doesn't want to show up on that list I don't see any reason to make them.

Matthew

If someone wanted to PM Tony or somebody like that, it wouldn't be too much trouble to find their linked username anywhere else on the board.

Are you sure that people can't browse the board annonymously when logged in, Tom? After all, the following options are in the profile settings:

Do you want to be visible on the "Who's Online" screen?

Do you want users to see the actual forum/post you are looking at?


I just assumed that the function is in there so users who were paranoid about people seeing their browsing habits could keep that private.

I believe that people who set the "invisible" setting don't show up at all.

There's some definite confusion going on. Let me see if I can give a shot at the various things we're talking about.

First we have the two questions:
Do you want to be visible on the "Who's Online" screen? Yes/No
Do you want users to see the actual forum/post you are looking at? Yes/No

1- If you go to the "Who's Online" screen, there's a "Registered users" section and an "Anonymous Users" section
2- if you are not logged on, you will show up in the anonymous section
3- if you are logged on, and have answered Yes to both questions, you will show up in the registered section, and everyone can see what you're doing and where you are doing it (as far as the BBS goes)
4- if you are logged on, and have answered No to the second question ("...see the actual forum..."), you show up as a registered user and people can only see what you are doing (viewing/replying/making a new post)
5- if you say No to both questions, you don't show up on the "Who's Online" screen at all


I think most people here (like me) thought you were talking about the people who were showing up as anonymous users in the bottom section of the "Who's Online" screen.

Lol, just read the "Who's Online" page to find 75% of the people online are reading the "Who's Online" page!

G

Guilty!

-jk

Ok, quick breakdown:

11 Registered User(s) - That means 11 people are logged into an account, and do not have themselves set to invisible in their profile. If you are set to invisible, you do not show up here at all, nor do you show up under Anonymous. If you only have it set to hide what post you are reading, you show up in this section, but other users simply see that you are online.

7 Anonymous User(s) - This means 7 unique IPs have visited some part of the site in the past 10 minutes, and did not log in (as logging in instantly deletes the anonymous entry). Again, many of these entries are typicially web bots, though lurkers count here as well. If you consistantly visit from the same system, cookies are still used to track unread messages. This however will not merge with your unread settings when you log in.