An idea about "no outsiders"

[Klonki]

Was looking around at the MP-section in the SP-forum. Why not make a "member-spoiler" to avoid non-members participate in mp-games when members state there ip-numbers in the posts? Just a thought.

[nurman]

Me likey...!

[BRKO]

Not only mp@sp. I think that making the whole "Diablo 2 Trading Forums" members-only would be great as well. I had proposed this in the past a few times iirc.

Several times I made a deal in ETF a got a whisper from account different than the one I made the deal with saying "hey dude, this is my second account" or something like that. Ofc it was just a guy whe read the puclicly accessible trade section and tried to cheat me. The same with giveaways when random folks grab stuff the OP means for fellow forumites.
There was a case when a very nice runeword was part of such public announced giveaway here and it later appeared on the other forum for sale...and thats only the one I know of.

[Elly]

I'm not keen on blocking off forums from potential members. Can you not make these types of games open to people who have been members since a certain date or have a certain post count?

[Thyiad]

I think what BRKO means is that with the Realm trade forums people are posting their Bnet account name and getting whispers from people who aren't their trade parters. The way around that would be to post "PM me for account name".

With the SPF MP forum they're posting IP addresses and getting non-members logging into the game. I've always recommended not posting IP addresses but people still do it.

For me the idea of making the forum readable only once logged in is counter productive to inciting new membership. If I can't see if the forum is worth joining, I personally wouldn't bother. Whereas if I can see a lively forum with great members and a useful knowledge base, I would.

I can see both sides but I do think traders/MPers could do a few things to safeguard themselves too.

[Elly]

Ahh okay, I get you now.

Yeah, I agree, think this is probably a case of the members devising their own protocols to safeguard themselves.

[zemaj]

hmm... while I agree more could be done on our end, I read the purposed idea a little differently than "making all the forums unreadable" for non-members... only "making certain sub-forums inaccessible for non-members". That way, no member has to go through extra steps & hassle just to do a trade or a MP game (have you ever tried to get some members to check their PM box? ), yet nearly all of the vast bulk of the useful/insightful/humorous/knowledgeable/happy-community-sharing bits are still open to whomever ends up here at the end of a google search. Win-win, really... especially as hard as everyone here strives to stay legit & untainted by lame hacker bs.

still, if doing so would require major over-hauls in the way things work or chew up massive amounts of dev time, then it may not be worth it... doesn't detract from the nifftyness of the idea, though.