Greetings HW family!
So...I have a proposal for y'all. How would you like to have one Holy Worlds account to log in to all the forums, to everything? One username and password for the three forums, the Art Gallery, the blog, and the possible Secret Project. Here's a list of the Pros and Cons I've come up with:

Pros:
- Avatars and signatures will still be separate across all the forums, so you can still be unique and "theme" your account for each forum.
- The Art Gallery would be able to be connected with the Sci-Fi and Historical forums as well
- A unified chat that's not linked to any specific forum (This would be a more long-term thing; chat probably wouldn't change for the immediate, six-month future).
- Let's face it, one password and username is simpler than three or four (if you're on the blog) or five (if you're on the Fountain). If we add future forums or blogs, no problem - same login.
- This would make a "big HW bar" a lot easier. This would be some form of new navigation that would make it easier to get around the various sites =) Having a single login would make this technically feasable by this summer or the next (If you don't understand this, don't worry )

Cons:
- Usernames would have to be the same across all forums.
- Posts by the "old" standalone accounts on Sci-Fi and HF wouldn't transfer to the new "single" account. In fact I don't know what we'd do with those old accounts, really This is the biggest problem.

So, there you have it. What do the users of HW think? Is this something you'd be interested in - or is it totally confusing and ridiculous? Let me know by voting in the poll! If you have another con or pro to add, please post it. But if you only have a 'yes' or 'no,' just do the poll, please. Thanks a million!

Andrew

Um... I already have all my names the same. Are you talking about, essence, merging the three sites? I don't like that idea.

If the forums are all going to be one big forum, I don't like that idea at all. From your post, I thought everything was going to be seperate, there'd just be one log in for it.

There would still be three sites.

The difference would be you'd only have one login. So if you log into Fantasy you're automatically logged into the other two. You only have to register once; and you'd have account on the other two if you want it.

This would also enable us to keep a more accurate member count, right, Andrew? Right now when people ask how many members we have I say "Well, Fantasy has over 400 members." We can't get much better than that, because the other sites have so many duplicates...

Also, Andrew, if you talk to Dieki he had an idea for "linking" accounts. Something about making it optional... I don't know how it would work. But talk to him.

For those confused, a very good example of this is Nanowrimo and Script Frenzy. Look at the two sites. Completely different. But if you sign up for one, you can use the same information on the other. You still have to set up a new profile and such, but your basic login information is the same. The accounts are linked.

I think that having just one chat for all three sites is a good idea, since we'll get more traffic in chat. Plus, the Sci-Fi chat has been rather empty, and a single chat would fix that problem, plus add a chat for Historical Fiction.

How will we theme the single chat though? A basic, silver theme might work...

Since most of the non-ranked users here have only one account, we can announce that everyone who has a different username per account change to one single name.

We can also (not sure if this will work) create one/two more accounts for every member that has only one/two accounts. Then they would be identical to the other users, and therefore be compacted into one account again.

Thoughts?

Please direct all further discussion to the sister thread. We would like to keep this one fairly direct and simple to avoid confusing newcomers to the discussion. Thank you!

Double posting to make sure ya'll actually see it.

The purpose of this thread was to find out: Would you, the members of HW, enjoy having one login for three forums, the Art Gallery, and multiple blogs, rather than having to register separately every time HW expands, or get a Fantasy account in order to access some features?

That is the main question, the one I'd like ya'll to focus on. Think optimistically, if possible. Wouldn't it be wonderful if....

I cannot make an educated answer without further study. As it stands, no. However, if the issues I have voiced in the other thread are resolved, then yes, there is no reason not to.

Also... yours truly who has never been a mod successfully deleted the poll. Standby to vote again.

That's what the "I can't say" option is for.

I know, but it wasn't there when I went to vote.

YES! I've been thinking about this ever since Sci-fi went up. It's just so awkward to sign into each one that I rarely ever visit the others.

I voted yes. I think it's a great idea to have one log-in for all boards and places.

I voted yes! When I first came on I was confused about it being a different log-in, so I think this will make more sense

To throw this into perspective on why we want to make this happen:

Right now, if you're a member of SF or HF and do not have a Fantasy account you cannot use the following features:

Upload art to the Art Gallery
Download free wallpapers off of the homepage

Features we hope to implement in the future that will be limited to Fantasy users only include:

Automatic registration on the blog
Access to member only features of the homepage

Also, the idea of a central chat room, or a universal navigation bar depend on having a unified login. Without a unified login those features will not be possible.

Hopefully that's a nice concise way of summing up why we need unified login without getting bogged down with the technicalities. I know many members don't realize that if you don't have a fantasy account you can't use the AG, especially now that the embed codes work.

Another way of summing it up would be: We're not trying to assimilate the other forums into Fantasy, we're trying to provide equality for all forums.

So long as equality doesn't compromise things.

I will say that I am sorta open to having a google account system. What I mainly do not want is a unified chat room and 400 members on the other two smaller HW sites.

If we iron out some of these problems, I'm not unwilling for this to happen. I just don't want the forums merged into almost like one whole forum, if that makes sense. I want them to keep their individuality at the same time.

Yes, exactly.

The thing I love about this forum, is that there is Sci-Fi, Historical fiction, and Fantasy, and that they are each unique in their own way, each one I can have my own name, but if we bind them, each name will not be unique, I already have the same password for all three forums.

That'd be interesting. I've been on sites where your login is different than your "display name."

The first forum I was ever on (which wasn't a Web forum at all at that point, for what it's worth) let you have a different "display name" (to use your term) for every post, and a different default "display name" for every "conference" (room) in the system. You couldn't change your "display name" on a post once it was posted, and it always followed that alias with your "login" (which could never be obscured), but you could change your "display name" to match the content of your post. For example, for most conferences my dad used his real name, but in a programming conference his default "alias" was "The Sourcerer's Apprentice."

(Tangentially, my experience with that system makes me recommend that if HW were to ever want to switch away from PHPBB to an entirely different forum software, that we use Backtalk---it's the only web-forum software I know of that I can read from a Linux command line using a text-only client.)

Yes, I've talked about this with some people and I thought it would be a good idea, but life sort of intervened and prevented me from proposing it Anyways, yes, that'd be an alternative

Andrew

I like the idea, as long as there are different chat rooms...it could get confusing otherwise.

It would be incredible if this could be done, but I agree that there should be separate chat places for each forum, but there could also be one for all three forums as well (why not?).

I like the idea of having a separate display name, I have already seen this and I can see how it could free you up to change your name for specific places. I only request that if we do this we retain the spots on the information where it tells you what their display name is on the other forums.

It seems that people's main concern is that the forums do not get merged. Really the forums would not change at all (as long as we get the display names figured out), it would simply be that things like member counts and passwords and access to various things would be simpler in the area of clicking, typing, and checking.

Have you thought of anything to do about the previous separate accounts and all of their posts? This is actually my main concern, and I think it would be for any one who has posted a lot of posts. One problem that might happen is that if you were not an editor you would not be able to edit your own posts from before you got the single account.

I need to look into it more, but I believe it would work the same as when you delete a user: you could migrate all posts to a new user. So all of your old posts would be migrated to your new user

Oh, so like changing the poster?

Sort of, but it could be done all at once for each individual user (not post by post )

Good! That would take forever, even if everyone with the correct powers was working on it!

*thinks of Airi's massive collection of posts* ...yeah...

I'd be interested in seeing that happen, but this wouldn't mess with my username or change much for me. I'm a member of all three forums but what if someone comes along who just wants to join one forum, not all?

*shrugs* I'm fine with it either way.

@Celestria: Wouldn't matter. It'd just make it easier for them to get on there, because, just like your Google account, you don't necessarily have to use all parts of it. For example, I doubt you use Google Finance, Google Analytics, or Google Webmaster Tools, yet because you have a google account you can easily get access to all of these

Andrew

That is a good comparison with a Google account.

Well, so long as I can keep all my posts I have already posted (and nothing else comes up) I am enthusiastically for it!

I feel the same way, Tsahraf. I have a lot of posts on HF, and quite a number on SF, and I wouldn't want to lose them. As long as we can keep the stats of some sorts individually for each forum, and keep our posts, I think it would be a good idea. (Thank you so much, Andrew, by the way, for looking into all this.)

Exactly. I was thinking it would work kinda like a Google account

Okay, I'm locking this topic now, guys. I've gotten a lot of valuable input from y'all about what you think about this, so now we can move forward in discussing it with the forum team and testing it out. Thanks all for your input!

Andrew