Do the forums have enough privacy?

[grehorst]

What are your thoughts on the public being able to view the forums?

[Robert Hess]

Making the forums totally private seems like it would be counter productive. It prevents discovery, and it prevents people from getting an idea of what will be going on here.

At the same time, some of the things that may want to be discussed may be of a more restricted disclosure nature, and so should be kept only to members, and in some cases even restricted beyond that.

Assuming you want to keep "registration" basically open (like it is now), then you may want to also have some additional layers of "qualification" that you set onto members, and have additional areas of the forum only open to those folks. For example, perhaps you have some mechanism to verify that somebody is an actually licensed distiller, once they've jumped through that hoop, they now have access to that section of the board?

[Jonathan Forester]

I agree with you Robert. A combination would be good with some type of filters for different levels.

General Public

Moonshiners (have experience distilling, may be legal in some countries)

New Distillers (actually in process of opening a distillery)

Distillers (have licensed distillery)

Making the forums totally private seems like it would be counter productive. It prevents discovery, and it prevents people from getting an idea of what will be going on here.

At the same time, some of the things that may want to be discussed may be of a more restricted disclosure nature, and so should be kept only to members, and in some cases even restricted beyond that.

Assuming you want to keep "registration" basically open (like it is now), then you may want to also have some additional layers of "qualification" that you set onto members, and have additional areas of the forum only open to those folks. For example, perhaps you have some mechanism to verify that somebody is an actually licensed distiller, once they've jumped through that hoop, they now have access to that section of the board?