I had to confirm I'd read the rules in order to be allowed to read the rules!

When I logged in today I was asked to accept the Privacy Policy, and then to read and confirm that I accepted the rules. When I clicked the link I was taken to that section of the forum, but when I tried to open any of the posts there to read them I was simply returned to the page insisting I tick the box before proceeding. As a result I was forced to make a false declaration in order to find out what I had just agreed to!

I'm afraid that wouldn't stand up in court, since it couldn't constitute informed consent.

Obviously, this needs fixing.
 
Thanks. I enjoyed reading your post there.

The ironic thing here is that as I read the GDPR, since you collect only enough data to log me in and out of the forum etc and don't use it for anything else, there is a legitimate interest and you don't even need my consent! As for the forum rules, they have nothing to do with the GDPR and again it's obvious if I don't keep them there could be consequences, so why are they even asking about them?

I think the "feature" is in their legal advisers.
 
The ironic thing here is that as I read the GDPR, since you collect only enough data to log me in and out of the forum etc and don't use it for anything else, there is a legitimate interest and you don't even need my consent!
Correct. The same is true for the cookie law by the way.

The thing is: several platforms simply don't want to take any chances, and if you don't want to risk getting into a political (or legal) fight then it's much easier to simply comply fully than it is to oppose.
 
Which, of course, is also wrong of them. Since you are the Data Controller and they are just a software supplier, it should be your choice to decide on what basis you process the data. It's none of their business and they are interfering with your responsibility and putting you at a hypothetical risk.

(Or do they actually host the forum?)
 
Note: that is a XenForo choice, we had no say in it.
Which, of course, is also wrong of them. Since you are the Data Controller and they are just a software supplier, it should be your choice to decide on what basis you process the data. It's none of their business and they are interfering with your responsibility and putting you at a hypothetical risk.
That's probably because they think that they are much smarter, than any silly
forum administrator and they should dictate their politic views to everyone.
BTW, it's also a very good example of how proprietary software is working.

P.S.: Maybe XenForo guys are also collecting forums.freebsd cookies as well? :D
That's why it shows its "cookie agreement" without any confirmation from forum staff?
 
proprietary software or software which source code can't be studied or modiffied sucks even if has a freeware license or a permissive one.
Have to strongly disagree with that.

What does suck though are fanatics who are unable to even consider deviations and/or any other options but their own, usually quite narrow, vision.

Take closed source software. Like it or not but that is how things all started. Before open source became a hype we had shareware and freeware. Most of which were closed source. That whole environment eventually led up to what we have now. Even ZIP started as closed source.

Fact of the matter is that without closed source software many open source stuff we have today wouldn't even exist. Yet fanatics like to ignore those facts quite easily. All too easy to ignore and even disrespect the past, who needs it, right?
 
Stallman was right! Peoples can say whatever they want about him but at the end of the day he was right: proprietary software or software which source code can't be studied or modiffied sucks even if has a freeware license or a permissive one.

And software that can be studied or modified, can also suck. In fact, most of whats spewed out of the GNU or Linux ecosystem is amateur crapware.
 
Right, this will be fixed in the next release. Apparently, we're being niche ..

To be very honest, we never anticipated that people would store their terms and rules or privacy policies in multiple threads in a forum. I suspect it's quite a niche use case.

The idea of forcing users to agree to terms/privacy policies was mostly that you do not want any visitors to be able to use the forum at all until the policies were accepted, so we restrict access to all but that one URL (and perhaps some others).

So when something like this comes along which is essentially multiple pages that need to be agreed to, then it quite clearly doesn't work well.

I'd probably suggest that you review whether the "true" terms and rules can be amalgamated into a single, more concise page. Expecting a user to read a few sentences can be a bit of an ask sometimes, let alone 9 whole threads! :)

That said, we do have a solution for this in the next release which should help.

It is two new options (one for terms, one for privacy policies) that we show on the "Force X agreement" pages which allows you to supply a whitelist of routes (the part after your main forum URL) which will bypass the force agreement pages.
 
If one hasn't posted here in a while, then one has to re-accept the 'terms and rules' (see https://forums.freebsd.org/misc/accept-terms). Fair enough.

However, if one then follows the link, and goes to that page, one is redirected to the 'accept terms' page... Round and round.
I'm sure not many people do actually read the rules first, but if there's a community on the internet where people are going to read and follow the instructions, this might be it.
 
However, if one then follows the link, and goes to that page, one is redirected to the 'accept terms' page... Round and round.
Hang on. This sounds familiar.

if there's a community on the internet where people are going to read and follow the instructions, this might be it.
Judging by the number of people that post questions that clearly violate the rules, I'm going to say the exact opposite ;)
 
That option has indeed landed in the forums software (had forgotten to track it), so it should be possible to now read the rules & regulations without getting forced back to the consent page (in other words, we have 'whitelisted' the URLs under /forums/forum-rules-and-guidelines-required-reading.49/). Let me know if it doesn't work.
 
Yes, it looks like the same behaviour.

In GDPR terms, I think that all that would matter is that the 'terms and rules' page states what (minimal) data is being held and why. I don't think the GDPR cares about forum etiquette, and if the 'accept' button then redirected to the 'rules' threads, with the implication that folk should read them, that would surely be all one could hope for. But I'm not a GDPR expert.

(and I did say 'if there's a community....' -- I'm an optimist, not a fantasist!)
 
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