Guest Account for Private Worlds | World Anvil

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Guest Account for Private Worlds

New Feature Addition · Access management (subscribers/authors) · Created by Joseph.Knight
declined

What functionality is missing? What is unsatisfying with the current situation?

In my experience, there are a few things working against this site. First of all, it's very niche, and if people know about things like worldbuilding and RPG's, they seldom ever have enough interest to get them to visit the site. Second, a lot of us worldbuilders are a private lot who clutch our secrets close to our chests so as to not ruin the surprise, should whatever we're working on be published or if we simply want to surprise our players.

But we would still like to show it to some people, right? And why should they have to create an account just to read private content? Sure, it could be said that if they really wanted to see what we're working on, then they'd go through that little extra effort, but why limit our potential audience?


How does this feature request address the current situation?

If our potential viewers could somehow create a guest account (or maybe even a sign in mechanism?) to view private content, it would go a long way towards helping us gain a fan base while keeping our content private.


What are other uses for this feature request?

I'm not sure if there are any. Mostly I'm just thinking out loud about something I've noticed that could use some attention. Hopefully I'm making sense and there's not a feature like this that exists already that I simply haven't noticed, yet.

Follow up


What I envision is an account that each individual creator can setup themselves with a username and password that allows the guest to access certain articles that would otherwise be private and/or members-only access. Kind of like a membership tier for an account that doesn't necessarily belong to any specific person.

Bear in mind, that I don't know about all this 'Sage' stuff, which is why I put the disclaimer out there that this could already exist in one form or another and I simply don't know about it yet. Hopefully that clears some stuff up.
Good to know! It's a shame, though...

The Team's Response

Hello there :) The suggestion is completely against the terms of service.
  • It is a multi-user account
  • It has no accountability of action action
  • It is straight off illegal (false Identity)
  • It is also breaking World Anvil's monetization strategy since accounts have Subscriber limitations this is aiming to remove.
    Current score

    47/300 Votes · +7721 points

    Votes Cast

    • +300

      by Celestial Lion
      on 2022-05-15 23:53
    • +300

      by xxzeroxx204
      on 2022-05-15 09:50
    • +100

      by Nuclear-Weasel
      on 2022-05-15 02:11
      I think shareable links, similar to Google Docs or One Drive, only visible to those who have them would be so useful to be able to send articles to my players about something relevant to their character or about something they only know!
    • +300

      by UmberPenumbra
      on 2022-05-15 00:15
    • +300

      by A Frightened Skeleton
      on 2022-05-14 11:30
      love the idea of a sign in thing, kinda like private tumblr blogs. alternately there’s the idea of doing something like “key” links like what Toyhou.se does :0 it’s just a link that you generate so you can share a private [world, in this case] so that anyone you send the link to can see the private content.
    • +300

      by Deceptabot
      on 2022-05-13 19:14
      LOVE IT!!
    • +300

      by Teejbadeej
      on 2022-05-13 17:39
    • +1

      by timecool2
      on 2022-05-13 13:25
    • +300

      by Vyxxer
      on 2022-05-12 00:29
    • +100

      by lliraeden
      on 2022-05-10 16:03
    • +300

      by The Bronze Manticore
      on 2022-05-10 11:42
    • +100

      by R.Harrelson
      on 2022-05-09 20:23
    • +100

      by LaneysCastle
      on 2022-05-09 07:29
    • +100

      by A Sneaky Velociraptor
      on 2022-05-09 04:21
      I like the idea of something like a shareable link like you'd get in Google Drive. Maybe even a temporary link where anybody who has the link has access to the article for an hour or something and then it expires.
    • +300

      by zunami
      on 2022-05-09 04:00
      I get the idea behind limiting access to private worlds, but when you have people that are already paying to use a service, making them jump through hoops just because you don't think they're paying you ENOUGH to be allowed to enjoy your product in a reasonable way, is just a little on the petty side. I used to run into problems with the amount of "followers" I could have all the time, because people would come and go from my D&D group, but it wasn't like I had 200+ followers out in the big wide world, but it seems like the devs at least fixed some of this. Anything to make this easier, I will throw support behind.
    • +300

      by mightymat
      on 2022-05-09 01:32
    • +300

      by A Fierce Hobbit
      on 2022-05-08 22:54
    • +300

      by pecawolf
      on 2022-05-08 17:49
    • +20

      by Everwild
      on 2022-05-08 15:39
      I'm an advocate of guest logins/temporary access, by virtue of the fact that it's a bit obnoxious to expect my family and friends to have to create an account when the lion's share of them have NO use for WA outside of popping in to see my progress and maybe leaving a remark or two. However, I think what's proposed here goes a little too far beyond that. If one expects a private lounge in a posh restaurant, one should expect to pay a premium. That said, $300 a year isn't exactly pocket change (for most), especially just for access to a single feature. Perhaps somewhere down the line, some of these higher tier features could be offered a'la cart at a reasonable rate for people who cannot necessarily afford to pay for Sage or higher, and still have access to the features they feel they need. It's just a thought; ya'll be good to each other.
    • +20

      by Pokadot_Panda
      on 2022-05-06 19:55
    • +300

      by ReaverArklight
      on 2022-05-05 20:00
    • +300

      by darthkenobi2010
      on 2022-05-05 18:21
    • +300

      by Strawbelbadude
      on 2022-05-04 21:03
    • +100

      by StrayArya
      on 2022-05-04 17:15
    • +10

      by StrangeBit
      on 2022-05-04 15:34
    • +50

      by catlandia
      on 2022-05-04 02:20
    • +300

      by BunnyMoss
      on 2022-05-03 15:19
    • +50

      by A Fluffy Orc
      on 2022-05-02 12:04
    • +10

      by A Enfeebled Orc
      on 2022-05-02 02:24
    • +10

      by IsaacGideon
      on 2022-05-01 20:13
    • +300

      by TheFear
      on 2022-05-01 19:28
    • +50

      by Volantine
      on 2022-04-30 12:44
    • +100

      by BARON229
      on 2022-04-29 18:25
    • +50

      by ddaniel
      on 2022-04-29 17:42
      It could be something like google drive shareable links, links to private articles that are a bit different so people can't just stumble upon them. And then no account creation is needed. Maybe the link would expire after x time (larger by subscription level) so there's a monetary cause too. Just like how intellij monetised collaborations, it's kinda annoying restarting them every 30 minutes, but you're not gated off of them
    • -50

      by A Lusty Orc
      on 2022-04-29 09:52
    • +300

      by Ratha
      on 2022-04-28 10:55
    • -50

      by UnknownWriter88
      on 2022-04-28 03:03
      Pretty something similar already exists
    • +10

      by Adcheryl
      on 2022-04-27 14:38
    • +100

      by Exarx
      on 2022-04-27 13:22
    • -300

      by A Rambunctious Goblin
      on 2022-04-27 12:10
      So you want to private content not to be private but visible by guests without an account? World Anvil has a subscribers features that you have to pay for in order for Dimi to be able to pay you know ... for the people seeing your content.   Thinking of it, you can simply get a Sage account and give out password secured articles - this exists already. :)
    • -10

      by Toblin
      on 2022-04-27 12:04
      I'm curious who this differs from them just making an account and getting subscription role, or even a clickable link to get said subscription role.   They still need to create an account. How would this be different, except that the "guest account" would be vastly limited. It would *still* require a creation of an account and a login, which is the huge step people don't want to do.
    • +300

      by Scalenex
      on 2022-04-27 09:03
      This sounds like it would be difficult to implement, but I think it would be worth the effort because it could hook some people into World Anvil who initially don't want to register for a third party site.
    • +100

      by TheDoctor292
      on 2022-04-26 23:27
    • +300

      by Wordigirl
      on 2022-04-26 21:27
      This has been suggested before multiple times (especially for 18+ articles), but I don't remember Dimi's response. Voting on this anyways. Hopefully it can be implemented this time! Thanks for bringing it back up. God bless!
    • +50

      by Tobus
      on 2022-04-26 20:16
    • +300

      by Tizun
      on 2022-04-26 17:52
    • +300

      by Sach2000
      on 2022-04-26 13:18
    • +300

      by Joseph.Knight
      on 2022-04-26 13:07