It is obvious reading through all the comments that a lot of people came here seeking a safe and private forum within which to share.
Although this is not a private forum, the wish was father to the thought, and people felt and acted as if this was private.
We have all had a major wake up call.
As far as I can see the forum must remain public to allow non-members to read threads before they decide that they want to join or decide to just lurk.
This gives the Catch22 that all posts are visible and can be re-posted anywhere.
Now on some other fora there is a private "members lounge" which is only visible to signed up members of the forum.
So what happens in the forum stays in the forum.
One example:
http://www.motorhomefacts.com/forum-70.html
This claims to be read access for members only - haven't tested it yet but you get the idea.
So I propose (if this hasn't been proposed already - this thread is growing faster than I can read it) that a new area is created; Members Only - where only signed up members can read the threads.
Hopefully this will provide the feature that many thought that they already had; a private forum visible to signed up members only.
This also gives the opportunity for threads which are felt to be too personal to be generally visible on the Internet to be moved into the private area.
This is obviously a very difficult area because for any thread some posters may be happy to have their posts visible whilst others are not.
@Giverny @adminstrator I would welcome your feedback on this.
Regards
LGC