Hi, all! I’m considering a change to these forums to integrate authentication with our Omni Accounts, and perhaps also to require having tried at least one of our apps with that Omni Account. This is meant to be a place for people who use our apps to be able to talk with each other; it’s not meant to provide a general forum to the Internet at large.
Any thoughts or concerns regarding this idea?
Part of the motivation here is to reduce the number of separate accounts people use at Omni. (To that end, I also want to merge our Stenciltown accounts with Omni Accounts.) But another big part of the motivation (and the entire reason for the requirement that people have at least tried using our apps) is to reduce the volume of spam accounts that these forums seem to attract. (I guess that’s the downside to having a well-ranked, long-lived website!)
I’d like to interact with you all more often, but every time I visit these forums I feel like I’m drowning in a flood of spam to review. (I appreciate how great a job you all do at flagging that spam! But as the forum owner, it then ends up on a to-do list of flags for me to review.)
Sounds good to me, especially since it would reduce (or even eliminate) spam posts.
Would the content of the forums still be indexed by search engines? I think that maintaining this visibility is important as searches related to Omni’s apps often point to forum posts (especially if it’s something very specific).
While I’m all for eliminating spam posts to forums like this, how will people that haven’t purchased an Omni product ask questions aimed at current users?
Agreed! Yes, I think we’d want to keep the forums anonymously readable by anyone. It would just require an Omni Account to post.
All of our products have free trials which start automatically when signing into an Omni Account, so they’d just need to start a trial in one of our apps before asking their questions.
Sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me, as long as it retains read-only public access.
If someone signs up for the trial but does not commit, does this mean their access would be revoked? That would seem a tad harsh if they have already taken the time to register and may still be considering their decision…indeed, being able to clarify questions in these forums may help inform those decisions.
My thought was that the requirement simply be that people have at least launched our apps, not that they must be current, active customers. So, no, I’d think that once someone has forum access they’d keep that access (unless they abuse that access).
That looks like you may be creating another problem for ‘spam trial periods’. I guess I’d like to be able to read the forum before even deciding if I want to try the app.
I think anyone who is not a user and reads this forum will get a very positive impression of the product, so it may help future users.
I’ve been reading this forum for 4 years and didn’t realize the spam. Is it really big?
I think tis is a reasonable approach suggested by Ken. As an OmniFocus for a number of years I like this forum to be able to both ask questions as well as to see what I can learn from others to get more out of the software.
Seems like a good idea to me. My password manager sometimes gets confused with the two separate accounts (…hmmm… or the user of the password manager sometimes gets confused). It would be nice to consolidate.
If anyone can try and make an account, have not revoked their access without subscription.
Sounds great!
You are the best Ken, most approachable guy in this business.
It seems to me that one potential downside could be that if the forum software is compromised, there is increased risk of the Omni Accounts also being compromised.
