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Index of Subjects On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Edward Dyer wrote: > Hi John, > > On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, John Nemeth wrote: > > > I would like to get a general consensus on whether people think it > > would be a good idea to restrict guest accounts to only reading > > webpages on the local machine. We have done this in Victoria. The > > reason for doing this is to encourage people to register for accounts > > as opposed to just logging in as guests all the time. What does > > everybody think? > > I think it's a great idea, provided that you have about 10,000 > information providers on your site that users can browse. Otherwise > I think the guest users are going to find it so restrictive that > most will go away very dissatisfied. That's very _unlikely_ to > encourage them to join, IMHO. > > Here in halifax, we found that guest usage amounted to 2% to 5% of > the total logged in time, and about 5% of the total sessions on the > text service. This has not changed since we have added PPP service > (no guests on PPP.) Some guest users continued to operate that way > for months, but eventually they want access to e-mail, and easier > access to URL's, and either join or go to other providers. We here in Winnipeg we had the same guest usage from public access terminals alone (read Libraries) while we were still happening. In general guest usage was high in comparison to usages quoted above. We had only a couple hundered Information Providers (IPs) and have dwindled to about 20 active IPs since BSCN officially disolved two years ago (Sat May 9 1998). I could offer some daily statistics if I pulled out some archives (if the media is readable) but it's really's not worth the effort. Best I can remember, guest usage pushed 20%. But that's an old story. I would like to establish some sort of partnership with local ISP/(Phone companies) (there seems to be little difference here in the Peg now, it appears to be such a cut throat monopoly now) to make things happen again but I feel like a one man band. > We don't allow guests to enter URL's explicitly (using the > ghttp://... shortcut) although they can jump from link to link from > the pages they can access (and no doubt some have found the links to > the search engines, where they can go anywhere, but most of those > search engines are very unfriendly in text mode.) And of course we > don't allow e-mail or news browsing. Still, it seems to be enough. > I would say that word of mouth (i.e. a friend showing you the > system, and then walking you through the registration) is still our > major source of text service users. Yes, we had the same restrictions. A user could not specify a "GOTO" unless they had a registered account and for the most part a "registered account" did not require a fee but only a letter that took 6-12 months to process. It was pretty easy for them to find a personaly home page on the system that provided a starting point to external URLs. If anyone is ever in Winnipeg feel free to contact keving@freenet.mb.ca or (204.661.3236) if you have any ideas or encouragement to share. I am certainly interested in hearing. Kevin Georgison Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada "To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research." > Ed Dyer aa146@chebucto.ns.ca (902) H 826-7496 CCN Postmaster > http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~aa146/ W 426-4894 CSuite Technical Workshop > Religion Page Editor, Chebucto Community Network http://www.chebucto.ns.ca
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