[ncbutters]

You can set your site to "Editorial" mode which can be found on the "Settings" tab and then go to the "Users" tab and set the users that you want as "Editors". So the only thing missing is having it so other users don't have the ability to comment or vote?

Out of curiosity what is the reason for allowing users to view but not participate in any way?

[ph0rque]

> So the only thing missing is having it so other users don't have the ability to comment or vote?

Exactly.

>Out of curiosity what is the reason for allowing users to view but not participate in any way?

Certain subcultures on the internet have very... interesting troll types, and what we're doing on one of the sites is essentially starting over on a forum that's been tainted by some of these trolls. Thus the lockdown on any write-participation. On the other hand, we want to be transparent about what we discuss, and attract the members in the community who are not the trolls. (We are envisioning a registration process where new users tell about their names IRL to discourage trollish behavior.) Thus the read-only availability to anyone who comes by. Does that make sense?

[ncbutters]

Yes, having the problem with trolls is obviously understood, this is why we give you the admin the ability to "ban" a user, kill comments/submissions, as well as set any other user as an admin to police the system as well. Granted this could be time consuming for some, which is where I can see your use-case coming into play (which we will look into).

My only other question is, if "good users" are coming to your site but now have no way of participating (commenting/submitting/voting), how are they able to prove themselves and get an "invite" to participate?

[ph0rque]

We plan to include a link to a submission form (similar to this: http://www.emailmeform.com) in the sidebar.

[ncbutters]

Cool. We'll look into it.