ABOUT THE GIZA ONLY CATEGORY: The Giza Only category is only visible to those who have a Giza login. This enables forum users to post in way that is not immediately visible to the outside world. That said, it has always taken about 10 seconds to CREATE a Giza login, so we’ve added an extra layer of privacy through the Giza Lounge… The Giza-only category essentially IS the old forum (which was only a single category forum) brought forward. The other public-facing categories are options that didn’t exist before. It’s a phased rollout, and we’ve been hard at work building all these features.
ABOUT THE GIZA LOUNGE: The Giza Lounge is a forum area (category) that is BOTH not-visible to the open web, AND requires (additionally) a ‘trust level of 3’ to access. Once users have access, anything they post to the lounge is only visible to other people with access to the lounge-meaning OTHER users with a trust level of 3.
There are TWO ways to GAIN a trust level 3.
METHOD ONE: One is to participate in the (new) forum for a while and earn it. We don’t disclose the exact nature of the threshold of activity or types of activity, because we don’t want people filling the forum with junk at a massive pace in the attempt to gain levels. The system will resist that, but still.
METHOD TWO: The other is, if a user has been 1) a long-time user of the OLD forum AND 2) is a current full member of Giza, they can open a support ticket and we will manually raise to trust level 3. The ticket must contain 3) a link to your profile on the old forum [example] so we can see the activity history at a glance. Note-finding your profile in the old forum is as simple as visiting it and searching for something you posted or commented on, then clicking your name on that post, which opens your profile. Then copy that URL from the address bar in your browser. Again, you must be a full-member to skip the line AND have a history in the old forum that stretches back for a long while.
Naturally not everyone will like this third feature (the lounge), and no one’s REQUIRED to use it. But for those who’ve been asking for enhanced privacy, we can’t have it both ways: “Protect my privacy from fly-by-night trolls, but let anyone who has a login touch anything they want.” We also can’t watch 1000+ individual accounts manually. So an automated solution is the only practical way, and therefore trust levels are automated.
This effectively creates THREE ways to post.
- One is publicly (which the old forum didn’t have, and which, based on the topical categories gives ‘new blood’ and tentative visitors a chance to see what Giza is about before they commit to creating an account.
- TWO is in the Giza Only category which is essentially the old forum that requires a Giza login to see and post to.
- THREE is in the Giza Lounge which requires a user to have been around a while, become seasoned, had a chance for people to gauge their mettle (or heavy metal) and for us to decide they’re not a 100% troll.
The old forum only had ONE way to post. You could post to people with a Giza login, but they could have created that login 10-seconds ago and be anybody, since creating a login takes about that long.
This way, that option still exists, but 2 OTHER options exist that can accomplish two things:
A. Growth of the Forum, because we have a way for people to get a taste through the public posts.
B. Added Privacy, because long-time members have their own area one has to earn their way into through participation.
We think these added options drastically improve Giza member choices vs. the only forum with only the one option.