OGM Forum Is Now Publicly Visible

[peterkaminski]

Hello OGM Folks!

As you probably already know, OGM does much of its work in public view. Our regular meetings, for instance, are recorded and posted and made available for anyone to view on YouTube.

Similarly, Jerry and Pete always intended OGM Forum posts to be viewable to anybody (and any search engine) on the web, without any sign-in required. It’s not that way right now, just for the simple reason that the right switch didn’t get flipped during setup.

We would like to flip that switch now, and make all the posts that regular forum members can see viewable by anybody on the web, without sign-in. By making the Forum public, outsiders could view the Forum content, but they could not post unless they were invited or registered and approved to do so.

Any attachments to posts would also be visible. The user information pages, however, would not be visible.

Timeline-wise, we would make the change around the end of November 2020.

Does that all sound okay? Please share your thoughts by replying to this topic, or ping Jerry or Pete.

You can dismiss this announcement by clicking the “x” button in the upper right of this box.

Thanks for using OGM Forum!

– Jerry and Pete, your hosts on OGM Forum

[BillSeitz]

I am fine with any normal posts of mine being read by anyone. But I did make 1 post that’s basically a roadmap for a product I haven’t launched yet. I’m not positive I want that out there yet. Nobody has replied to that post, so no big deal if I just delete it…

[peterkaminski]

Sounds good, Bill, thanks for the feedback! Yes, please delete the one post.

[RobOK]

Not sure if you deleted already, but maybe post a summary level post in place?

[NancyW]

I think this is a fine convention if everyone is clear. AND I wonder about the value of more private spaces for connecting, slower incubation, side conversations to resolve issues, etc. There are some wicked questions about "how can we be totally open and transparent as a contribution to the world AND have more private places to work on stuff that may cause harm or risk to participants if fully exposed? " There are cultural and gender issues, to name just two, that may make a blanket assumption of all public, all the time, a barrier to participation. Thinking THROUGH the tradeoffs might be a useful exercise to examine some of the larger issues of diversity, inclusion and equity.

[peterkaminski]

@NancyW

the value of more private spaces for connecting, slower incubation, side conversations

Really good point, Nancy!

Discourse allows for “private” categories, that aren’t viewable or findable by anyone except forum members who have been specifically invited, and I would suggest we take advantage of them for more private discussions.

We already have private categories for Free Jerry’s Brain and forum admins. It’s easy to create more.

[NancyW]

Good. Then that should be part of the notice you pinned!! It was not obvious to me. But again, I’m paying such distant, little attention these days I probably missed!

[peterkaminski]

It is not, your attention is fine.

I thought about adding it when I drafted the notice, but then I worried it might be more confusing than helpful.

I was hoping it would come up in discussion, and then we could talk through it with more context. And a good grounding post like yours!

[skreutzer]

Fully agree! I usually find it quite useful if there’s the option for public and non-public posting, so everybody can decide on an individual, per-case basis where their messages belong into best. If it’s either all non-public, the material is trapped/lost/unshareable/unfindable (consider StackOverflow vs. ExpertExchange), and if it’s all public some conversations might be discouraged from happening in such a space. With both, it becomes a matter of (granular?) federation, the general concept expanding beyond just public/non-public and might include per author, topic, circle, date, etc. etc., and importantly also across services/places/sites/platforms/clients.

[lovolution]

what is the latest on this @peterkaminski?

[peterkaminski]

@lovolution, I’ll go ahead and make the changes soon, probably within a few days.

[lovolution]

as in, there’s consensus on making it open to the public?

[peterkaminski]

The whole convo is here… There wasn’t any dissent, so I think we’re okay to proceed with the plan.

I think we should promote the idea of using private topics more, but that might be best folded into a larger effort to document and facilitate forum use.

[peterkaminski]

I’ve made the changes, and the site is now publicly visible, except for user profile pages.

I did not submit the site for indexing by any search engines, figuring that might be a good separate mini-project.

Summary of old/new settings and tests:

old

Login / login required = yes
Users / hide user profiles from public = no

new

Login / login required = no
Users / hide user profiles from public = yes

disable bannerness

https://forum.openglobalmind.com/t/making-ogm-forum-publicly-visible/389 = yes

tests

can non-authenticated visitors see posts? yes
can non-authenticated visitors NOT see user profiles? yes
* https://forum.openglobalmind.com/u

[holtzermann17]

I can confirm it’s also working in nndiscourse now.

[BillSeitz]

I decided to leave it as-is.

[holtzermann17]

I noticed that via.hypothes.is isn’t working, at least not for me.

https://via.hypothes.is/https://forum.openglobalmind.com/t/roles-redux/450

That leads to a blank white page in Firefox, albeit with the Hypothesis bar overlayed on top, and clickable.

[peterkaminski]

@holtzermann17, is that something that used to work and now doesn’t, or it just never worked?

FWIW, I suspect Discourse and hypothes.is won’t play well with each other for a long time, and maybe never.

[peterkaminski]

I have changed the title of this topic from “ANNOUNCE: Making OGM Forum Publicly Visible” to “OGM Forum Is Now Publicly Visible”, reflecting that it no longer needs to be an announcement, and expressing it now in present tense, because the change has already been made.