I know there are a ton of lurkers that love to come in and read the threads. There are a lotta good people that draft great threads on RPGs, and wargames, and everything. Brian in space games – Scott in rpgs – LK in everything - PM in those crazy small European wars in the Balkans — You should come out. Sign in and say something.
This thread might be just me talking to myself but… anyone who is just lurking should sign up and start having some input.
It is a bit awkward at first but actually almost everyone here is pretty nice. I think I lurked for 8 years before I said a word! I bet there are a ton of you that can say the same. And some even older.
Sign in and chime up! And even if you don’t I plan on talking to myself here a bit until Tom or LK closes me down. (Marq would never close me down he is too nice)
I lurk because posting on message boards could get me fired at work. I love this place and it’s still my primary source of gaming information and I read it every day but circumstance has forced me to be a lurker. Even the times I want to join in threads the time it would take me toget up, leave my desk, and get to the cell phone area is usually not worth it.
Not for nothing but they won’t be tracking what you post, but rather that you were on a gaming site to begin with. Good news is that if you aren’t specifically blocked by your corporate firewall you’re probably not being monitored. Still, it’s a possibility.
A question from my own ignorance, they can’t see what I type in as a reply and send across their network? Could they see that I am even sending a reply?
I lurked here for about 15 years before I finally signed up. It’s a lot friendlier here now than it was years ago (before the broken forum split). I still spend most of my time lurking here and usually just login when I want to post something.
Theoretically with the forum on an HTTPS connection and everything we do here routed through the Discord app framework, I’d (web dev semi-layperson) guess that you’re safe overall. I’m sure any one of our myriad IT folk can confirm though, but my rough understanding is that the purpose of HTTPS is to encrypt the traffic you send back and forth with the webserver.
I certainly lurked more than posted for a good chunk of my initial time, but a few years ago significantly ramped up my posting and haven’t really slowed down since. Qt3 is one of the most rewarding parts of my life, online or otherwise, and I’m very grateful to have stumbled across it during college all those years ago :)
They can for sure tell you are on forum.quartertothree.com and how frequently you are on it, if you are browsing from their network on a work PC. They’ll know by your username, and if they track this stuff, your workstations IP address. If you browse from your phone they can only tell by IP and only if you are on the private wireless they provide. If you are on a guest network they likely don’t track that stuff, or care. A lot of places that offer a guest network don’t even block as many things (like Facebook) as they do internally. Most place only use that type of information against you if they are looking for a reason to get rid of you anyway.
They could only tell what you post if they come to the site and look for your username, or if they have keylogging software on your machine or some other way to remotely monitor you without your knowledge. Unless you work for a super secrete military facility (or a paranoid crime lord) you’re probably fine. Better safe than sorry would be to browse in private mode, then nothing is stored on your local PC (though they still know what web pages your IP/username is going to, if they are monitoring internet traffic with a web filter, and almost every company would/should be doing just that).
My advice, if you are worried about it? Just keep doing what your doing, use your phone, but dive in and join us after work!
Scott put it very well I think; what they’ll track or monitor or record is what sites you visit, how frequently, duration; that sort of thing.
If they implemented any sort of corporate policy you would find yourself blocked from even opening the site. Since you can it does imply they perhaps are not monitoring at all but it’s not a given.
