Why can profiles be viewed only if logged in?

[PrinceOfFunky]

What if one wants to show their own profile to someone who doesn't have an account on here?

[papercoffee]

Then they have to make an account.

[PrinceOfFunky]

Then they have to make an account.

This doesn't answer the question in the title tho. Do you know the answer?

[papercoffee]

Why it isn't visible is simple, a kind of privacy protection.

Can you explain why you need it be visible to outsiders?

[EvilGrins]

I can't speak to the why, but I can say it's not unusual.

Most forums are like that, although I don't know of any where you can view them without being a member.

[PrinceOfFunky]

Why it isn't visible is simple, a kind of privacy protection.

Can you explain why you need it be visible to outsiders?

Well, e.g. The signature can be useful for outsiders to see, they can't see it unless they find a post from the member. Anything that is visible in the profile can be found (through a relatively long research) as public info around the forum.

I can't speak to the why, but I can say it's not unusual.

Most forums are like that, although I don't know of any where you can view them without being a member.

Isn't it the opposite? I'm thinking about BeyondUnreal, Forumfree and Gamesurf.

[EvilGrins]

Isn't it the opposite? I'm thinking about BeyondUnreal, Forumfree and Gamesurf.

I said most, 3 forums are hardly to the contrary.

[OjitroC]

Well, e.g. The signature can be useful for outsiders to see, they can't see it unless they find a post from the member.

Signatures, where users have them, may be useful or they may not (and where they appear to be useful they may contain outdated info or dead links). To find useful signatures one would have to trawl through 7.5K profiles unless one had the name of a user one wanted to find and, moreover, wanted to find in order to look at their signature - but how would one know that they had a signature and, if they did, that it was useful?

If I was a non-member and was looking for your signature, I would type Prince in the Search and sure enough several posts from you come up. So finding a post may not be that difficult if I was looking for your signature.

Anything that is visible in the profile can be found (through a relatively long research) as public info around the forum.

I don't think the date joined and the date last active are available publicly at all.

Most active forum and most active topic may or may not be useful info, depending on the viewpoint of the person looking at that info. The links themselves just lead to the forum/topic and not to the member's posts in those. The info in Search User's Posts could probably be found by a long search, as you say, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should be easily available to non-members.

Enabling non-members to see profiles would
a) introduce a level of unnecessary complication in setting-up/adapting the forum software, in that the Send Email, Show converations with the user and Send PM links would need to be disabled and so, perhaps, would the Search User's posts;
b) raise the issue of privacy for members - do they want their date joined and date last active information to be publicly available and do they want non-members to be able to search their posts?

[PrinceOfFunky]

Isn't it the opposite? I'm thinking about BeyondUnreal, Forumfree and Gamesurf.

I said most, 3 forums are hardly to the contrary.

Do you know of at least 3 forums that do that?

but how would one know that they had a signature and, if they did, that it was useful?

Suppose you tell someone that you have a signature in this forum, that's how they'd know.

If I was a non-member and was looking for your signature, I would type Prince in the Search and sure enough several posts from you come up.

Unless you use the Advanced Search feature, only 2 out of 15 posts in the first page are mine when searching for either that word or my whole username.

I don't think the date joined and the date last active are available publicly at all.

The join date is shown below the profile picture on each post. No need to read when someone was last active as it becomes clear when finding the last post of the user.

The info in Search User's Posts could probably be found by a long search

The reason why I created this topic is cause the info doesn't require a very long search to be found, just some annoying additional steps.

Enabling non-members to see profiles would
a) introduce a level of unnecessary complication in setting-up/adapting the forum software, in that the Send Email, Show converations with the user and Send PM links would need to be disabled and so, perhaps, would the Search User's posts;
b) raise the issue of privacy for members - do they want their date joined and date last active information to be publicly available and do they want non-members to be able to search their posts?

a) It depends on how the forum is written, if it's about rendering templates then it shouldn't be that difficult, tho I received no explanation to why this isn't doable other than your assumption.
b) The join date is shown on each user's post. Using Advanced Search you can find all the user's posts. The "last active" info may be the only one that's hard to find out, but this would make it the only info we are hiding for privacy.

[EvilGrins]

Do you know of at least 3 forums that do that?

This one, Hermskii's, DestinationUnreal, GauntletWarrors, HofgamingClan....