Clarification of Guest Access 1. Backround ------------ During the time limit debates many members made it publically known that they would use the guest account to do all of their reading and then use their time to do their posting. More importantly, Andrew Patrick and Miranda Gray also found that 3% of guest accounts were using Lynx. Andrew and I felt we should take approporiate operational action and limit what the guests can access if we were to effectively implement the time limits. I posted the following message which I drafted with Andrew's assistance: Subject: Changing Guest Access to Correspond with the goal of a Time Limit -------- One consequence of implementing time limits will be a need to tighten the restrictions on the guest account. If callers can use this account to access telnet, gopher, WWW, or newsgroup services, they have a method of getting around the limits (at least for reading material). So, we will be tightening the restrictions on the guest account as the time limit is introduced. The most noticable effect will be access to the discussion groups. We will either remove access to all the discussion groups for guest users, or have a short list of "sample" groups that guests can read. This sample system was the intent of the original setup, but it has not been followed consistently over the years. Please post any comments about this to the newsgroup. There was some mention of shortening the time limits for guests as well. This would be an appropriate time for the board to discuss this as well. There was a minimum of debate. 2. Current information ---------------------- I met with Matthew Darwin approximatedly a month ago regarding his volunteer position as a menu maintainer. He asked about the guest account access issue and mentioned that he could mark various newgroups with a '*' for eventual closure. Apparently we mis- communicated. He has been closing off newgroups as he does his menu work on NCF. This fact came to my attention when he temporarily shut off guest access to the Board discussion areas. He has since reactivated them. This is in no way Matthew's fault but probably due a technical misunderstanding on my part. I have asked Matthew for details on this and received the following update: >From xx673 Mon Apr 24 13:37:02 1995 [stuff deleted] Lisa writes: >Could you please send me a brief update on this. How many newsgroups have >been made unaccessible (estimate) and which, if any, are you are leaving for >guest perusals? I guess I've denied access to about 25 ncf.sub.* newsgroups, the 6 ncf.status.* groups, and a couple of others (ie ncf.admin.developer.m-darwin) I can't do many more because they belong under the domain of specific information providers or they are in SIG areas (Al Seaman's area). The ones left for guests are: # This is the list of newsgroups that guests are allowed to read. # Trees are not allowed (ie you have to specify all of the newsgroups # in the ncf.help.* tree) can.general can.infohighway can.jobs can.politics ncf.admin ncf.admin.volunteer.thank-you ncf.board-discussion-moderated ncf.board-discussion-unmoderated ncf.board-resolutions ncf.francais ncf.general ncf.help.answers ncf.help.books ncf.help.com-nets ncf.help.courses ncf.help.glossary ncf.help.modems ncf.help.pda ont.forsale ont.general ont.jobs ott.events ott.forsale ott.general ott.housing ott.jobs 3. Decision Is this an operational or Board issue? If you all think this is a Board issue I would greatly appreciate a formal decision. If a 'full accessibility' vote occurs I will request that all closed newsgroups be opened again. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisa K. Donnelly, am412@freenet.carleton.ca Executive Director, National Capital FreeNet/Libertel de la Capitale nationale -----------------------------------------------------------------------------