So the way it works is that new users have no user group assigned. You lot have all been assigned to the Members group (there is also a Trustees group). You’ll notice that this means you have “SLMS Member” alongside your username at the top of posts.
My philosophy is that a category should by default be publicly viewable, and non-members should be able to comment in it. Those permissions are taken away on a category-by-category basis.
For example, the Storage sub-category can be seen by anyone, but only members can post, because non-members are not allowed to store things in the space.
The Members Area category is only viewable by members, because it contains sensitive information.
I would promote the idea that we’re a membership organisation and so this is a resource for members with limited interaction for the public. Whether that’s your view or not, we should be thinking about the value of contribution by non-members to them, to us, and to this web presence itself. Also, whether fighting spam is going to come into this[^1]
As a suggestion, would it be possible to remove the wordpress comments from the main site[^2], and instead create a forum thread here that is explicitly for open commenting?
[^1]: I’ve been burned here. The wiki I was part of that started open ended up locked down and stagnant.
[^2]: The comments that are there at the moment are stale and often flat-out wrong. We should remove them regardless!
(Oh - markdown footnotes aren’t formatting correctly. The in-situ numeral is good but the note is missing the numeral and first word)
Discourse has excellent WordPress integration and it’s supported in the core software. You can see it in action at boingboing.
Also, discourse is running Akismet, which is an excellent spam filter.
In terms of openness, I want minimum friction for someone to be able to say “Hi - you look interesting! Tell me more!” and likewise “Your project looks neeat, here’s some advice” or “My experience with this process is xyz”. If people get involved in the community first, then they’re more likely to think “you’re a nice bunch of people - I think I’ll join your club”