We currently have a private forum. This allows folks to express their opinions and share advise to any other member of the forum.
This allows us to curate who has access to the posts and comments.
I’m considering maybe making the forum public so non-members can read the posts and comments.
BUT i won’t do anything like that without consensus of our members.
What are your thoughts on making this forum publicly readable?
Posting will still be limited to members, but non-members would be able to read.
Public (web crawlers will see and it’ll show in Google searches)
My initial thought is why not. I have no issues with the public viewing. But I agree that only members should post. That at least will keep the content on track to the issues and keep out those who just want to cause problems. Unfortunately there are far too many of those out there already.
It will increase exposure to PwnCNC and more people will become aware of what is here to offer.
Since 2016 I have grave concerns about making much of anything accessible to the public at large in this country. That said, I see no harm in trying it. You can always switch it back if it becomes a problem. I think the key, as you said, is to keep it read-only.
Personally, I prefer the idea of only registered users being able to post. This keeps the bots and anti-everything people from posting poo poo posts. I think it’s great that anyone can read the posts, but why invite specious dissenters to the door and allow them to post things that don’t improve the forum? I like to see opinions from the other side, but I think you are inviting haters and giving them free rein which can confuse those who aren’t as knowledgeable on the subject and want to learn.
As someone who does not post much on this forum and does not own any pwncnc products other than some hold down clamps, I say make them do like I did and join. I still like to mostly read here but I still think folks should have to sign up.
In principle, I am against it. I think it opens the forum to attacks from spam and you can see below that Scienci’s forum has suffered recently.
My career was in healthcare and for more than 5 decades I was a member of various societies and clubs, which always remained private and only open to genuine trauma healthcare providers membership. Once the internet became widely spread, many of the groups to which I belonged, opened the membership to public access. A few short weeks was usually enough to close the general access.
It was the single most effective way to improve the deteriorating signal to noise ratio. The model eventually became much closer to the old Usenet groups (does anyone else remember them?) and you not only had to be a member but if you did not know of a group’s existence, you could not bother the group. I think that enthusiasts will usually research what they want and find fora that they wish to join.
Membership at least prevents the casual spammer and the troll who only want to disrupt the work of the forum. I would ask why would non CNC machine owners wish to join? YouTube is full of examples of CNC machining and if the person develops their interest, they can easily find the right forum to join. As a business proposition, you may find additional customers by opening the forum doors. It remains to be seen how much additional custom you could generate, set against how much spam and related issues you would suffer.
If you produce a newsletter, it could be e-mailed to stores selling CNC related stuff and just be a given away to interested people. That would preserve the help and technical content of the forum and keep the signal to noise ratio at its current good standing.
With the above I don’t see how spam will be any different. In my many years of experience running a public forum, with the above rules, spam is caused by fake accounts. Spam is controlled through the registration process.
Take a look at the Ars Technica Community Guidelines for ideas of written rules.
Making the forum publicly readable will benefit PwnCNC by getting content in the search engines search results.
I was a member of Ars Technica for about 10 years. I remember instances when fake accounts were used to spam the system, so it was not foolproof. My recall may be faulty, however I seem to recall that matters got worse after the Ars Technica site was acquired by Advance (parent company of publishers, Condé Nast) in 2008.
With the advent and wide adoption of artificial intelligence, I believe that many sites have suffered with AI mediated spam posts. Have technological industries not yet found a way to defeat cleverly planned attacks? The attacks don’t necessarily amount to just selling junk when the sales ads were not requested but amount more to a denial of service.
Per Ars Technica:
Possibly some SEO tweaks may be beneficial. PwnCNC come up 6th in the search listing for Hobby CNC and Accessories. How PwnCNC presents itself to the world at large is a matter for the way the business wants to be viewed. If you search on just “CNC machines”, you get thousands of hits. With AI searching, You may possibly be able to hone the results to a manageable number.
Notwithstanding the foregoing… people new to CNC machining may not be able to make a good decision about which company or products to use. Just saying to people “we are here” does not raise the profile of the company within the general noise of everyone wanting your business.
I guess the question to be asked is should the forum be utilised as an advertisement or does the emphasis required by an effective advertisement require more than the forum can supply?
First, let’s acknowledge the obvious: this is a business that sells products—it is not Facebook. If the company intends to monetize our personal information, including our browsing and posting habits, associations with other members, and anything else of value to marketing firms, then it should at least be upfront about it. In that case, it should behave like Facebook and require users to log in before they can read or post any content.
However, if we’re simply talking about the ability to read publicly posted content—content that most of us contribute under pseudonyms anyway—I see no harm in allowing search engines like Google to crawl and index it. In fact, I believe doing so would be beneficial. As others have mentioned, increasing the site’s visibility can only help the company grow. If someone out there searches—whether through traditional means or AI-driven tools—for something like “CNC Z-axis Cable Chain”, and PwnCNC shows up as the top result, that’s an unequivocal win for both the company and the broader CNC community.
This is, after all, what the Internet was originally intended to be—a vast, open network for the sharing of human knowledge to help improve lives. I know that sounds a bit philosophical, but seriously, this is what’s at stake here.
When it comes to posting, I fully agree: absolutely lock it down and require a user to sign in. But let’s be real—once PwnCNC becomes the go-to authority for hobbyist and light industrial CNC (a little optimistic foreshadowing), trolls will show up regardless. From your garden-variety “bored tonight and need a life” troll to more organized marketing scams, requiring a registration won’t stop them. That’s where moderators and ban-hammers come in. That’s their job.
As I said in a much shorter post earlier, there’s hardly any true privacy left in today’s world. Unless you’re whispering into someone’s ear in the middle of a desert with no electronic devices within a 10-mile radius—and preferably under the Get Smart Cone of Silence—some company, somewhere, probably knows about it.
This is exactly the reason I started this thread.
The trolling over the last several years of our company and the out-right betrayal of who we thought was a partner is all behind us now… for the most part.
“they” seem to be more interested in dealing with Sienci than with us atm. That won’t always be the case, but if we completely remove “them” from the decision making process… i would have made this forum public (only members post) from the very beginning.
Having worked in computers for decades, i definitely know the value of SEO. I’ve done what i can all over the place to boost our rankings and what not. We’re still a tiny mom-n-pop business but folks are still approaching us like we’re a large company. This has everything to do with the quality work i’ve put into our website and SEO. A completely new person never heard anything about the hobby cnc market… and they’d think we were some large 10x-million dollar business. While that is somewhat by design is was done on purpose to make us look more professional and above-board. We are… but having a good well-attended website and SEO can go a long way to making that reality known.
Another reason for this is i’ve seen a whole lot of AEO talk. AI Engine Optimization. Whenever you search on google, the AI’s answer is what’s read first. AI doing the leg work of reading websites and just regurgitating an expected answer. It’s getting better and better for sure.
The posts, websites, comments, etc that AI is reading in order to form an opinion on any company or product is all to often the only thing the searcher is going to read. Thus optimizing for that has become the goal starting this year.
This is why, i believe, that we’re getting a TON of support ticket spam related to SEO. Everyone and their brother is coming out in force with their own SEO services and hawking it to every business in an attempt to get that money before it dries up and changes to AEO.
Thus… the goal of giving the AI “more” to read is vital… and this is where opening up our forum to public reading is why i’m asking.
