Thank you for the clarifications -- it helps me understand that I'm not crazy.
If an unregistered user clicked on "post" or "reply" in the forum, they should perhaps go directly to the login screen. That would be the behavior I would expect on a forum that requires login.
What happens instead is: users can press post, they get the form to write the post, they can see the preview and press confirm, and then they are returned to the forum -- as if the reply/post worked...only to have their data lost.
Similar things are happening on other apps too -- for instance, an unregistered user can go to the photo album, click on "add and album", name the album and all, press submit -- then they get this error:
We had a problem processing your entry:
We got an error that we couldn't readily identify. Please let the system owner know about this.
Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSDB, "Query was not a statement returning rows.")
Please back up using your browser, correct it, and resubmit your entry.
Thank you.
The user experience on General comments is similar. They can add the comment, confirm it, and they are thrown to the login. But if they don't login, the data is lost.
For all these cases, changing the write permissions for unregistered users or the public have little effect on improving the experience...
I'm aware that an unmoderated open public photo album or forum is not a great thing to host -- if the user experience made more sense, then I would leave it and require login. However -- and this is the important part -- I can't host a site were users think they're posting in the forum anonymously but they're actually losing their data...
I've come to understand that the permission admin tools are very confusing. I'm probably going to get under the hood more, thanks to your help, I'll understand more one day...
