[RFC] Usability: Login on registration / verification after registration

[naderman]

Well let's consider a forum where a lot of content is only visible to registered users which requires admin activation. It's true that you could then configure viewing permissions for the group of inactive users to be the same as for guests, but that seems like a lot of extra work?

I don't know if this is correct, but I suspect that the majority of forums that require admin activation, do so because they want to restrict access to content to a small group, and not just for creating content.

However I suppose it would still be advantageous in this situation if the user could already set up his user profile etc. Maybe there is some way to make the inactive users group default to guest permissions?

[callumacrae]

I think that that is a bad idea. It is bad enough having to configure permissions for forums with the number of groups there are, adding another one would just confuse it further.

I agree with the initial idea of logging them in, but I don't agree with an additional group to impliment it.

[DarkBeing]

@igorw
When I made the post I was just throwing some thoughts into the discussion which jumped to my mind after reading your first post. I admit that they were not thought through.

@all
But I have to say that I am a bit confused now. As far as I was understanding from the first post, this topic was/is ( ? ) about the case where activation is required. If this topic is only about "e-mail"-activation, I somehow missed it. In this case I am not sure as to why make the difference between e-mail and admin activation. In both cases someone has to "click a button" to be activated. Wouldn't it be easier to have the automated login in both cases?

So far I am still not 100% convinced if this is in general is a good idea. As I said my main concern is the fact that un-activated users can see everything like an activated user. It wouldn't surprise me if this will create complains by those forum owners who, as I already said, have their forum set up, that only registered and activated users can see the actual forums. I am not sure if there are many boards like this out there and fixing this with new permissions will probably add to the complains about the permissions and confusion (as callumacrae pointed out).

If I am missing the point here, I apologize in advance. Currently on 14 hour shifts and my brain might not work 100%

[phynixx]

I don't know if this is correct, but I suspect that the majority of forums that require admin activation, do so because they want to restrict access to content to a small group, and not just for creating content.

This is exactly the type of forum I manage and I know of 2 others that do something similar.

If it might help the group sort out use cases w/in this discussion here is my setup:
- 4 main types of user groups
- anywhere from 10-100 users in each type of group
- about 60+ forums & sub-forums (in about 6 or so containers)
- various access to forums based on group type
- not a *single* piece of information is made public to anybody that isn't a registered user & registration is only granted to very specific people. I.e. you have to belong to a group in the "real" world in order to be granted access to the info in the forum.

Hope that helps somewhat.

[Erik Frèrejean]

Why not simply login the user when he clicks the activation link?
Also is this a one-time thing or will you be able to login a second time without activating? If so how is an administrator going to block such a user (besides banning), as the "activated" flag is false there is when doubt about a user no way to enforce him to reactivate.

[Oleg]

It sounds like allowing unactivated users to log in when user activation is set would work, no?

[tbackoff]

If we are going to do this, please make it configurable. I personally wouldn't want unactivated users to have the ability to login without first activating their account. I'm sure others feel the same way (glancing through this topic, looks like 1 or 2 do?). I do see how this would be useful to some boards.

[Erik Frèrejean]

It sounds like allowing unactivated users to log in when user activation is set would work, no?

With that you remove the ability for an administrator to deactivate an account.

[DavidIQ]

I think you could allow inactivated users to login but give them the board in some read only form where they wouldn't really be able to do anything until they activate their account. They would have the applicable message displayed much like we have the "board is disabled" notice for logged in administrators. Then the two concerns posted prior to this post would not be concerns at all.

[nickvergessen]

I think you could allow inactivated users to login but give them the board in some read only form where they wouldn't really be able to do anything until they activate their account. They would have the applicable message displayed much like we have the "board is disabled" notice for logged in administrators. Then the two concerns posted prior to this post would not be concerns at all.

Well this might not work for some MODs currently, so they will be open to them until the MODs got updated. But it still sounds like the best idea in this topic, so far.