Saturday 13 May 2000

Community Rules

Hi everyone,

I would like your opinion on a "rule" I am considering introducing here on the community.

I am concerned about people who both use nicknames and do not declare their e-mail address in their member profile. The problem is there is a danger of "slagging-off" people, events, clubs or whatever without having to stand up for your statements in front of your peers.

While its is "Escorts" post that has made me think about this I don't want to criticise his/her views and hope you won't feel that I am getting at you because that is not my intention. It is to avoid the "flame wars" you see over on usenet.

It is possible for me to set membership conditions so that I have to approve them first. However, I have always said this is your place and I do not want to screen membership or sensor or edit contributions. I just want people to stand up for their views.

This is my proposal:-

1. If a new member neither declares their real name nor their e-mail addreess I will ask them (though a public post on the community) to either add this information to their profile or if they have a genuine reason to withhold it to let me (as the community manager) have this information.

2. If the new member does not wish to go alog with this I will change their status so it is not possible for them to post messages to the community.

3. If in the meantime they have made critical posts that I consider go to far I will remove them from the message-board.

I would appreciate your views, either by replying to this message or e-mailing me at mleete24@hotmail.com

Michael Leete

6 comments:

  1. Sounds fair enough to me.I must admit I was apprehensive about putting details on the net when this site first started last year. However, once it became clear the way this community idea was developing I felt comfortable about changing my profile to avoid confusion. The fact that we all know who's who on the message board greatly enhances its value and the overall value of the site - in my view the risk of revealing my identity measured against the overall risk of using the internet in the first place and the pleasure of using the community, is quite acceptable.I hope this does not have to become a member's only community because that would deter many of the more casual users of this site, however that would be preferable to it degenerating into a slanging match.... 

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  2. I quite agree. I'm only on the membership list with just my first name as I put Tony Branson on my first attempt at joining and when that went wrong they wouldn't let me use my full name again. I have updated my membership profile with my email address, no spam please.Tony

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  3. 100% Agree with Micheal's Rules.   All membership should be on a First Name / Last Name and e-mail basis.    Pseudonyms should only be acceptable if they clearly identify who the person is in the trials world.  eg "Triple Editor".    The only caveat is that I had a similar problem to Tony B when I joined.   By the time I had membership sorted I was rapidly running out of variations of the Simon plus Woodall theme!I would also like to add an appeal to the number of people who read the stuff on this site but do not join to do so.   Let us know who is out there in cyberland so that we can count you in when we say "All the people on Classical Gas think......."

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  4. I support Michael and the others view, if you have somthing to say you shold be prepared to put your name to it.Stuart Harrold

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  5. I only joined up yesterday after finally getting around to getting onto the net at the end of last week. I have to say that I agree with proposal. 

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  6. Thanks for the feedback which was in favour of "true identity" for posts. I have now drawn up a set of Community Rules and added them as a page which can be accessed from the left hand margin.Michael

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