Posting policy on DG

I was looking up via Google more information on a lily that I recently ordered and came up with this posting of a thread that I mentioned the lily on in the Northeast Garden forum. I was more than surprised to see all our postings available to all on the internet, as I thought our DG post were not to be made public except in a few circumstances. I and most people I know on DG expect our posts only to be made available for DG paying members. I am not happy as posting family news and family photos are in my mind for a limited DG audience and not for the whole internet world to see and read. Please explain the policy about making our posts public and also how we can know when our postings are being made public so that if we choose not to post we can stop. I hope this an anomoly. Patti

Patti, there have always been - and there remain - a few forums that are invisible to non-subscribing members and visitors. Our other forums have always been somewhat visible to members, although some of them do not allow anyone except paid subscribers to post.

So how do we know which ones to not post on? Please post list of closed ones please? Patti

This is not a Department of Defense website (and even THAT is not as secure as would we like to think or hope it is).

A general rule of using the internet is that 'ANYTHING' you post on any site just became public knowledge. The bots that the search engines use to crawl through web pages to create search results are often not limited by things like 'subscriptions' or locked forums as they crawl through the pages in a very different way than how a user would.

not happy about this

Isn't it that on DG only forums marked with an asterisk are the private ones? Access to those does required paid membership. I am a subscriber but when I first joined in 2006 was surprised to find a post of mine available on line. However, it was something I had posted in the Sewing forum that is not a "private" forum.

Thanks June. Helpful.

* Forums marked with an asterisk are only available to subscribing members.

The Northeast Garden Forum has an asterisk, so our posts on that forum should be for paying subscribers only, however they are available via Google to anyone. Terry can you get this fixed, Thanks, Patti

Patti, I'm sure Admin will get the web developer to do what's needed to correct this.
It's good that you brought up the issue.

One of the reasons I intensely dislike Facebook is that it's so public. I have
my settings so strict that I think I'm the only person who can see my page! ;-)

There's nothing to fix, guys. All the forums that have asterisks cannot be posted in by non-subs, but the only forums completely invisible are the parking lot and back porch - that's how it's always been.

This forum (the DG forum) was at one time in that same status, but a few years ago, we felt it was better to open it up and let non-subscribers interact with us here, instead of limiting our input to subscribers only.

Sometimes it can be near impossible to stop a search engine (google, bing, etc.) bot from not crawling only certain pages. Especially on forums where every thread page constitutes a separate page. Now, a site CAN block the bots from crawling ANY part of a site, but that would mean that DG would NOT show up in search results and that can be terrible from a traffic standpoint. It would also be tedious as all hell to set each page up individually...not to mention that it would have to be done for each new thread and/or page that is created.

Even your so-called 'private' stuff on FB is not nearly as secure as some would like to think...not.even.close.

Total double-edged sword. That's why I always tell people to carefully consider what they post online...because when you...you put 'privacy' into the hands of others who are not nearly as vested as you are.

I'll say it again...if you post it online...anywhere...it is 100% NOT private anymore.

Terry and "Guys"

Then this statement is false as the material is available for anyone to read (readonly file) and it is clearly being made available to non-subscribing members.

The notation for the "Back Porch" and "Parking Lot" are not any different than the "Northeast" so how would anyone know that the former are closed while the Northeast is not? I just want transparency in usage and policy clarification about postings. Patti

Patti, I agree the wording is clunky and I'll see if we can change it (although technically what it says is accurate - they are not available to non-subs.)

But what you can't see unless you logout and access the page is that if you aren't a subscriber, you won't see links to the back porch and parking lot forums - it's like they don't exist.

I guess I will recommend that we move our shared family news on the Northeast Forum to the Back Porch. We are a chatty and close bunch. Patti