restricting guest accounts to reading local webpages

Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 00:27:47 -0600 (CST)
From: <Kevin_Georgison@MBnet.MB.CA>
To: csuite-dev@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <csuite-dev-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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On Fri, 3 Mar 2000 Kevin_Georgison@MBnet.MB.CA wrote:

> 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).

[ the rest cut..]

If my comments seemed somewhat incoherent thats because I am and they
are.

P.S.  I was under the impression the csuite-dev was focused on the
development of the software.  This mail-list has become tainted with
policy/politics more than core technical issues.  (Winnipeg submitted a
number of features and securtiy improvements years ago that never made
it into the CSuite package until reports of exploits came about a year
after our submittions.  And I'm sure it wasn't even Winnipeg's
contributions that made it into the security patches.)  Yes I know the
policy issues are impossible to avoid.

If I could follow my own train of thought I would be considered a
Genius!
	KG

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