Public vs private?

[mudxdresser]

To my surprise, Google returned several posts from several of the discussion forums. I thought one had to be a member to see the forum posts other than that of the producers? So, what is the difference in public vs private, is it simply that a member can make a post?

[Nessie]

I've known that for a long time...I guess it didn't particularly register with me since I don't consider anything I've posted on this, or any forum, to be private. But what the heck, I've got a few days off from work and a little free time to run you a diagnosis.

Testing, testing, one two three!

Log out of Quicksand Fans. Re-approach the forum from I-Don't-Belong-Here mode.

Try to get in and read stuff anyway.

ALL producer-specific forums, including "Other Producers"...I cannot view at all. Must log in to read.

General Discussion, Creative Submissions, Nuggets, Off-Topic and Technical: I can read all posts but cannot view attachments. So these are indeed partially open to the general public.

Over to Google.

I chose a member with a unique name who has posted many messages to the producers and Googled that name. When logged in to Quicksand Fans, yes, I can Google my way in to the "private" forums.

But I'm logged in! I'm okay.

When I am logged out and tried to Google my way in through this same member's name, I was informed that I needed to log in. Either that, or I got the splash page with the big Acidtester art on it. Not sure why it's not the same every time, but in neither case did I get in to see what I shouldn't.

Google "caches" pages (takes snapshots of them so they're available for awhile even if they change).

When logged out, if I Google and click on the cached version, I am brought, not inside the producer's forums, but to the cached version of the board index. That is good news! It didn't cache the private page.

Better news...after logging in, the index page STILL appears as the cached version. I still don't get to see the private page.

Kind-of-bad news: Google does show that the page exists, and displays a couple lines from it. Yes, this is of a page that we must log in to see fully.

The general rule seems to be that if the public is allowed to read it, Google will cache it. If the public is not allowed to read it, though, Google doesn't cache it. It must in fact see everything, though, if it lets me in when I'm logged in.

The same rules appear to apply to Deep Sinking as well. Experimenting with user names yielded identical results.

I also tried Googling topics on DS.

"Anime Girls In Quicksand (Morning, Part 2)" put into the Google exactly that way inside quotes does produce that page in the Morning Forum. Morning IS open to read.

But "Sticky: An Important Message Regarding Yahoo Email", which is inside "Into The Swamp", does not show up in Google at all, and that forum requires users to be registered.

I don't know if you care about UMD, but all parts of UMD, including the attachments, no matter how naked or graphic, are and always have been open to the public. The producers over there don't want anyone to miss a thing.

Tests on privacy levels were conducted with Internet Explorer 8.

Nessie

P.S. I just looked at the bottom at the online users, and Google [Bot] is visiting us right now!

[Kookus]

It should be just enough to get people interested, but strongly suggest that they sign up to receive the full benefits of the site. There's also a security concern when you start letting anonymous users download monster-sized files.