We are planning a change to the Motus community discussion group. Currently, members must be logged in in order to view and respond to posts. We propose to modify this to allow all topics to be viewed without being logged in. A Motus account will be still be required to post or reply.
The primary reason for the change is to allow the content on the forum to be indexed and searched by search engines and made more accessible. This will make it easier for people to find answers to common questions, and take advantage of the cumulative knowledge of the Motus network. This also restores the visibility settings of the two Google Groups (sensorgnomads and motus-wts), before they were merged into this new forum platform.
We believe the simplified and expanded access will significantly benefit the Motus community, but want to give everyone time to adjust their posts or profiles beforehand if desired, and to invite your feedback to help inform the process.
All content will be visible and searchable without being logged in
Questions and answers will therefore be available via a generic internet search. However, it also means that personal information shared may also be indexed. Some people may have inadvertently shared information they’d rather not be searchable, and in that event, they can modify past posts to remove such details. The forum has a powerful search function that can restrict results to only your own posts, and there are other ways to find information you’d rather not share, such as emails addresses or phone numbers.
Any post made prior to May 2024 was already visible and searchable; this was the setting on the two Google groups that preceded this forum during the decade they were active.
Usernames will be visible to anyone without a login
Until now, usernames in the forum were automatically generated from the full names provided when signing up with Motus (e.g. John_Smith), so to avoid sharing your full name publicly, we’re making these updates:
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All existing usernames that were automatically generated (i.e., all except those already customized) will be changed to generic, anonymized formats, such as “User123”.
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Usernames for new accounts will follow the same pattern.
Members can modify their forum username at any time via their forum profile settings.
The username in the forum is distinct from the Birds Canada login name or email address used to sign in to Motus and the forum, and only determines how people will see your posts in the forum. Your Birds Canada login or email are never displayed anywhere in the forum. The full name you provided in your Motus / Birds Canada account is only visible in the forum to members who are logged in.
We will also update the forum FAQ and welcome email to reflect the changes.
If anyone has questions, comments, or suggestions about this process, we invite you to share them.