(On this date in 1950, Gary Larson — cartoonist of The Far Side — was born.)

With all the activity around launch, promotion and marketing, I’ve only been able to accomplish a few things over the last week or so. Besides cleaning out several smaller bugs, tonight’s update addresses one area I think has been causing an initial WTF reaction when people first visit. For various reasons, all activities on the site have required login, and therefore, an account. So, when people land on the site and click nearly anything (Ask a Question, Make an Offer, etc.), they are prompted to login or create an account. Ugh… so rude. It’s time to let them do more.
The first step in resolving this is a feature I call Non-Member Questions. It works almost exactly the same as regular questions, except that:

• the user doesn’t need an account, and
• before the question is sent to the seller to be answered, the person who posted it has to confirm their email address.

Non-member questions are anonymous. (The seller cannot see their email address.) They are always public.

This can be enabled or disabled on a per-listing basis, and is currently disabled for all existing items in the system. To enable it, simply go to an item’s Edit Details page, check the box and save:

After I give this some time and any issues are resolved, the next step will be to allow non-member’s to make offers, which is a far bigger deal.
My goal with these non-member features is to make the site more attractive and usable before everyone in the world has an account. It’s all about effectively managing the communications between buyer & seller, and I think this is a step in the right direction.