Most boards are PUBLIC READABLE on The CoffeeShop

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I'm just popping this note up to remind our members that most of the boards on "The Coffeeshop" forum are

Writeable only by members but public readable

And this means that anything you submit can be read by anyone who visits the website.  We have taken the decision to put up the settings in this way, as it allows for occasional visitors / people who stumble across the site to take advantage of the wealth of information that we have built up here. However, we do need to have some form of traceback concerning contributors, and their agreement to abide by the forum terms, so new users are required to sign up and accept the conditions before they contribute.

One board - the Frequent Poster's Club - is only readable by members, and then only by members who have posted at least 10 times.  So that's a good place to put things that you want to share with established friends here, but not put into the public domain via the forum.

The following also apply only to signed in members:

a) The ability to send and read personal messages
b) Seeing the current running page with the most current data we have (the page is not updated as frequently for non-members) - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/tgf.php
c) The ability to see member lists in so far as other members allow
d) The ability to use the station comparator - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/index.html

[grahame]

In view of an email received this morning, I'm copying one of my posts from "Frequent Posters" onto the main forum.  For Frequent Poster members, I'll emphasise that what you write in frequent posters is NOT copied out from there by any frequent poster member ... the exception (invoked in this case) being your own posts.

There are times that you may want to post things and talk with other regular members of the coffee shop - people who you have got to know through reading their thoughts here - but not have your writings 'out there' in the public domain.   And that's what this new area on "The Coffee Shop" is designed to provide.

You can only view, and post to, this area once you've made (currently) 10 posts elsewhere on the forum - and in addition to the usual forum agreement, you're requested to respect the privacy of posts in this area and not to disclose them outside the group of people (established members, and the staff of the forum) who have access here.  The current size of this group is around 100 people.

You'll note that I've entitled this section "Frequent" poster's club rather than "Established" posters club.  We have a handful of dormant accounts where members have left us for one reason or another - perhaps they have moved away from the area, or have fallen out with our aims.  We are now locking such dormant accounts to help ensure that posts to this area will be between a group that's truly a "club" - although (and with the group's agreement) I wouldn't mind having some "president" and "vice president" style members - retired and respected - at some time in the future.

(As that's reposted from Frequent Posters, "this" refers to Frequent Posters and not News, Help and Assistance throughout)