message boards

I can easily understand your concern, and we all share it. But it's part of the game. There are some things that can be done to limit abouse such as moderation, requiring logins, validation of users identity or e-mail address. On mailing lists, the most common safeguard is verifying e-mail addresses. Not foolproof, but it helps. And everyone relies on ban lists and the help of ISPs.

As far as worrying? Well, take a look at HoneoyeSpeaks.com and the Canadice message boards, and the old Bristol board for that matter. Abuse has not really been an issue as far as I know. There was this little spurt here, but it does happen on occassion. Kind of like knocking over a trash can. Gotta clean up the mess but it's quite a while before it happens again.

Moderation wouldn't be all that bad sine none of our boards get all that much traffic...

If there are persistent abusers, there is quite a bit of legal action that can be taken against them, especially for a Town web site. If requested, ISPs will supply the name & address of the abuser and the lawyers take care of the rest. For extreme cases of course...

I would hope that Brsitol goes ahead with the new message board plans taking whatever security you think it needs. If worse comes to worse, you could always put it on 'hold' later if things did get nasty...

Rich...

Nick:	Rich (Superuser)
Date/Time:	Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 12:59:19 PM (Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 8:59:19 AM EDT)
Browser/OS:	Mozilla Browser V1.1a+ (Gecko build: 07/04/2002) using Windows 9x 4.90
In Reply To:	The Nut cases <Bristol> [August 27, 2002 @ 6:37:45 AM] (1/1)
Subject:	message boards
Message:
I can easily understand your concern, and we all share it. But it's part of the game. There are some things that can be done to limit abouse such as moderation, requiring logins, validation of users identity or e-mail address. On mailing lists, the most common safeguard is verifying e-mail addresses. Not foolproof, but it helps. And everyone relies on ban lists and the help of ISPs. As far as worrying? Well, take a look at HoneoyeSpeaks.com and the Canadice message boards, and the old Bristol board for that matter. Abuse has not really been an issue as far as I know. There was this little spurt here, but it does happen on occassion. Kind of like knocking over a trash can. Gotta clean up the mess but it's quite a while before it happens again. Moderation wouldn't be all that bad sine none of our boards get all that much traffic... If there are persistent abusers, there is quite a bit of legal action that can be taken against them, especially for a Town web site. If requested, ISPs will supply the name & address of the abuser and the lawyers take care of the rest. For extreme cases of course... I would hope that Brsitol goes ahead with the new message board plans taking whatever security you think it needs. If worse comes to worse, you could always put it on 'hold' later if things did get nasty... Rich...