You must log in to read topics. Can we change this?

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1

I wanted to share a post that I had written recently with a free software supporter in Lausanne, Switzerland. In a response by email he correctly stated that he can’t view the article; he would be forced to create an account and log in just to access it for reading.

Is this intentional? Shouldn’t we provide the content of our discussions openly to the public? It should be sufficient to configure Discourse to require a login only for when someone wants to participate in a discussion.

Any reason it was configured this way?

2

It probably depends on the category – I can read this post without login. While your another post in Education Network (with a lock icon) requires login. Maybe you could move the topic to another category.

3

Interesting!

Is there a specific reason why the “Education Network” category is locked down from public reading?

4

Not sure, perhaps @bjoern can tell who created the category IIRC?

5

@bittner back then when we set up the category this was then consensus between all initial participants. We wanted to provide a (semi) private space to discuss this topics, ideas, etc. Also many public mailing lists restrict the access to the archive to participants these days. I think there is a valid concern that people don’t want to have every idea they once had stored forever by Google & Co. accessible for everyone.

But feel free to ask the group if they are fine with changing the rules.