To try and free up some server resources I'm trialling making the site search facility available to logged-in users only.
This will have an effect on the "What's New?" button in the navigation bar, but if you're logged in then everything should be as usual.
Don't want to see these links? Register & Log in to YSDC.
If you're taking input on this change, I vote thumbs-down on it. Personally I prefer more anonymity when surfing this site.
My tuppence anyways.
It will help keep our server costs down for longer.
For those concerned about anonymity when searching the site, YSDC Patrons do have the ability to "cloak" their presence on the forums (invisibility mode).
As a generalisation, The change makes sense to me. It might be different if it was amazon or an adult site or something, but I'm not sure my search habits here are really of much interest or use to anyone, so for me its really not an issue.
Mind you, Kevin is a notqble Great old one of our community ; I'm less likely to be pestered by strangers if i am listed as Logged in than Mr Ross.
The invisibility seems a reasonable solution to me, assuming it could be extended to the occassional non- patron account in exceptional circumstances. (i.e. At the admins discretion)
I understand the reasoning behind the change, but here is my input.
I find it very annoying, because I like to start by hitting "What's New?", get my daily fill of topic browsing, then log in only if I see something I feel the need to reply to. Users who stay continually logged in obviously don't have this problem, but I have my web browser clear all passwords automatically when I close because it makes me feel a little more secure (all passwords being guaranteed to include important stuff like e-mail and work account, not that YSDC isn't important, too).
I'm not finding it a problem. Like ElijahWhateley I don't store any login details, but I just log in every hour or so to see what's happening. Obviously some people may find that more annoying than I do.
As a matter of curiosity, what sort of anonymity are people worried about? AFAIN the only thing that tags recent visitors is userpages and blogs, so are famous people getting lots of private messages when they log in, or something?
It seems to me a reasonable compromise to keep server costs low, especially as it's funded by fans and Mr & Mrs Of Cthulhu. I would have thought that, if necessary, enthusiastic non-members could use a filtered search engine to find stuff on the site, presumably also taking server resources, but much less often.
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