Non-Premium members posting premium content on non-premium forums

[munk]

I thought this was to case too, but when I was over at a friends house the other day who I have encouraged to sign up (currently he's just on the free membership), I was surprised to see that basic members can read the chat box and also have full access to the chat archives. Okay, so they cant post in the chat, but then lurkers don't post anyway! As mentioned above, most if not all offers get discussed in the chat, and ironically even offers (or more often particular bets/opportunities related to current offers) that aren't posted on the board are discussed in chat as it's felt to be safer / less visible.

I was also surprised that basic members have full access to the World Cup board where all WC related offers are discussed... I'm not sure if this open access is intentional or not?!

The above does devalue the premium membership in my opinion, but if that's what the powers that be have decided on then so be it... I just thought I should bring it to the attention of the regular contributors, as there seems to be a lot of confusion over what's 'premium content', and who can see what.

As it specifically relates to the chatbox, a key factor in the introduction of the premium membership was to combat idiots running riot / causing aggravation on the chatbox without any recourse (because membership was free and included open access to all areas of the forum / chatbox). If those idiots want to cause trouble then they can, but they can pay for the privilege of doing so and subsequently have their premium membership revoked without refund if they do continue to cause trouble (although in fact all of the troublemakers at the time had been given a free upgrade from regular to premium as was everyone when the premium system was first introduced).

That being the case, the answer as to whether being able to view the chatbox as a regular non-premium user devalues the premium membership policy is for the large part 'no'. The premium membership serves the purpose of disallowing troublemakers access to the chatbox and allows us to keep a fairly peaceful and all round 'better' forum as a result of it being in place.

Having said that though the issue is always under discussion and is liable to change so non-premium users can neither see or use the chatbox.

[Andy]

RE The World Cup sub forum, that should be Premium only I thought it was I think that was an oversight and we will change it to that ASAP.

RE The Chatbox when Premium access came in the chatbox was still available for all to post in and read it is just to "chat" in. Because of people writing nonsense in it, we decided to make it so that only Premium people could post in it which would stop that. It worked very well and the chatbox is a pretty good addition to the site. It has always "Officially" still been visable to all registered users though that has never changed.

Sometime in May (I think it was May) it changed or at least was noticed that it was now visable to Premium only, or something like that but basically it came up that "Who should be able to view it?". Most people asked thought Premium should only be able to read it too (100% of those people were Premium so thats not suprising). I think all the Non Premium members if asked would rather be able to read it still. You cant please all the people all the time. You can post anything in the chatbox really it has more liberal rules to the forum and is literally supposed to be where you chat about something very relevant that moment but completely irrelevant 5 mins later.

If everybody thinks only Premium members should be able to read it though then thats fine we can switch it to that. It will be that setting before the end of the week. I will update here when its done:
The Gambling Times | Premium Membership

Thanks

[munk]

Ok after the various feedback above, the chatbox is now only visible and readable by premium only members. Additionally in line with the details set out in the first post of this thread, the World Cup forum is also only visible by premium only members since it primarily contains content which would otherwise normally be posted on the Bonuses forums which are premium only.