Lounge

Hi Frances,

Well that is an impressive piece of work! I hope it didn't take you too long to do it. I think such a logical approach does show your computer science background. And it is extremely helpful in helping us to decide what to do.

It was a good point that the "open to Google" question is a site wide setting and can not be changed at the course level - I think in our discussions we had neglected that fact. I don't know what Martin thinks, but I doubt that moodle.org will be closed to Google so we will have to stick with that too I think. IMHO I think that is not a bad thing.

If we are open to google a compromise might be to require people who want to come here and read more to sign up with an account rather than use an anonymous guest account. I'd be interested to see what others think about this.

To me the problematic one is the RSS because there are absolutely no controls on RSS as Tui said (is that really Martin's daughter? How old is she? I can't see her profile, it says it is hidden). Anyone can read anything without having to login as a registered user or a guest. So I suppose this feature is a compromise between the convenience for those who may prefer reading RSS feeds and the control people would like to have over who is reading their posts here.

I can't see why we would allow guests in but not allow the RSS though. In both cases we are allowing unknown people to read the posts here. Why block guests but allow RSS, or vice versa? It seems inconsistent.

So I think the choice is between "totally open" or "totally private" with google open in both cases (anyway I think that we have little choice on the google question, I am right aren't I?) I don't mind which one is chosen although I personally would go for the totally open option - being open to outsiders is sometimes a useful thing. It is just the way democracy itself should function (but usually doesn't ).

Hope others can weigh in on this,
Tim.

Well, if as Martin says, you can close this course to Google with a hack that might be something that can be done and that will make many people happy. While being open to Google can bring in many new users through the discussions in 'Using Moodle', I'm not sure closing this particular course will have any negative effects in this respect.

I frankly don't loose any sleep over whether anybody can see what my opinions are here or anywhere. Fortunately we got rid of Franco a while ago and, at least in this respect (not in others), Spain is a rather free and democratic country. So I don't have to fear any consequences for my career because of the views I express here (besides, I have tenure ).

However, being open to Google does have some other (undesirable? ) effects. For instance, I could imagine a situation where some people who googled me for professional/academic reasons told me they had found it hard to find the information they were looking for because many of the hits that appeared in the first pages were related to some strange discussions about modules, courses, functionalities, nude sculptures, gays and and being open to Google in some strange place called Mooleu or Middle or something like this. Which would show where I've been spending (too?) much of my time lately

I would certainly like to keep the possibility to follow the discussions via RSS, though.

If I had to express a preference, I would say that the lounge should be open to guests but closed to Google, if this is possible.

Thanks very much Martin. The RSS is fine now.
I am hoping that you or (more likely given how busy you are just now) someone else can answer the question I asked above:
What I am unsure about is what happens to an RSS feed on a forum in a space that is closed to guests. I know that on another Moodle space, I had requests for RSS as some people prefer to watch discussions via RSS. that of course leads on to the question of RSS on topics or threads.