Private Members Only Forum

[Zathras]

It would be great if we could have another General forum, but one which is not public and only viewable to those members logged in.

There are sometimes items which I would be happy to share or wish to discuss with other woodland owners, but would not want be published for all to see on the web.

[Mod 2]

It would be great if we could have another General forum, but one which is not public and only viewable to those members logged in.

There are sometimes items which I would be happy to share or wish to discuss with other woodland owners, but would not want be published for all to see on the web.

Does anyone else share this view? Are there other forum users refraining from posting material or opening discussions because it's readable by anyone rather than only those who are registered forum users?

[Wendelspanswick]

It would be useful, I posted an open invitation recently to come to my wood for a BBQ but I had to get members to PM me for the address as I would not want that on the open part of the forum.

[Rich]

I'm happy to set up 'member only' forums as this makes sense. It would create a bit more work, as to make it useful I think I would need to confirm peoples identity more rigorously, but it's not out of the question.

Please send suggestions for topic areas that this would suit. I'm thinking the regional section or maybe subregional sections where individual members woods might be discussed would be a good place to start.
??
By the way how did the Solstice BBQ go? ........... great weather if I remember rightly.

[Wendelspanswick]

It was a good day! My partner and I camped up there the night before and we got up at 4:30am to see the sunrise (I went back to bed then!), later we had around 40 people for the BBQ in glorious sunshine and we all trooped up to the old hill fort to watch the sunset. A barrel of Exmoor ale and one of Hecks Port Wine cider was consumed and about 25 wild campers woke up with thick heads on the Sunday morning.
We strung up a sack full of straw from a tree and used this as a pendulum to knock off human skittles who stood on short log rounds, the idea being that you faced the skittler who swung the sack to hit you on the return swing. We also used my newly acquired Tirfor winch as a low wire between two trees.
The Treebog coped well and I checked yesterday and no smells or flies which was good to discover. In fact there was no sign that anyone had been there apart from a few areas of flattened grass and charcoal in the fire pit.

[Dexter's Shed]

I'm sure I mentioned something along these lines a few months ago, when we had new members that were looking for places to camp without being woodland owners themselves, and I was shot down in flames for mentioning such a thing

[smojo]

I think it's a good idea too. As a newbie I hadn't thought about the possible consequences of giving out too much information that is open to public and Google. So, as you know Rich, I asked you remove one of my posts. Although it's very unlikely to impact on our us and our woods, thieves are getting more devious about how they steal and using the internet to garner information about people is becoming an issue. It's just a wise precaution to keep some things private.

[Zathras]

Dexter, didn't see the suggestion myself as it would have got my backing.
btw, your tag picture is a little on the large side...

Rich, so far as suggestions - I'd be happy with just one private members only area like the general forum.
I don't think we need a private version for all categories or even many categories - just sometimes something like the BBQ or security talk could do with being more private / non-published.

Although it would be good to confirm identity, my main concern is the public publishing / searchable web element making it too easy for drive by information gathering - targeted infiltration will always be a risk no matter how far you go with it and it has to remain the posters responsibility to keep this in mind in my view.

[boxerman]

I could see that being fairly useful to those who want to discuss certain issues that could affect security/privacy etc.

It's not too difficult to set up a forum so that only registered users can see/access it and they are pretty secure from the average prying eye. Bots can also easily be excluded from access to so there is then no fear of internet searches showing up the threads.

I'm not sure there's any easy answer to confirming identities in any more detail when folk register but so long as the forum is invisible to non registered users there's actually little danger of anyone even knowing it's there so they'd have no reason to search. If active targeting by new users specifically here to look for info was a concern then I think it is possible to restrict access until after a certain number of posts which should be enough to give folk an idea of someones intentions.

[SimonFisher]

I think a single forum us sufficient too, rather than duplicating all of the other subject-specific forums.

Of course what would have been nice is if a post could just be marked 'visible to members only' when the post is being made