I am not sure it is healthy for this forum to continue to accept members with completely anonymous names, and no identity in the profile. Many users come in via a Yahoo email account, and ironically, those who request a "race challange" or "My car is better than your car" posts all have an untraceable yahoo accounts.

I am thinking, we should have stricter verification for members, and also those that exist must provide more personal identity, or their account should be terminated. Again, this is my suggestion, but I would like our valued (IDENTIFIABLE) members' opinion.

I think this will help flush out the antagonizing posts and possible tangent this forum can take.

Thanks
Ryan

 

Good idea.

 

I don't post here much but I don't think this is a good idea. I believe some of the more popular members may not want to "provide more personal identity" for lack of safety, maybe security, etc... Think about it from that perspective.

Also, all forums have these types of people (called "trolls") and the best thing to do is ignore them, not encourage them by making a 4 page thread in a matter of hours .

<biterness>

On a side note, I have asked several questions to the mods (in threads) and receive no replies (not a single reply in either thread). Who knows, maybe I should start trolling more and I'll get some questions answered.

</biterness>

If they get out of hand simply ban them, but I think this personal identity thing is not a smart move. As much as I like it here I would have to leave.....

 

At least everyone should put their location in their profile, even if it only the state or region.

 

Frosty, I hear what you are saying, but what about banning certain email addresses such as yahoo or hotmail?

 

The question is, how big do you want the board to get? It would be kind of cool to have a more strict verification process but that turns a lot of people away. The average porsche guy is used to having things done quickly and needing to wait to be verified will turn a lot of people off. This isn't a country club membership but a membership to an internet forum.

Keep in mind many people join who have no porsche and have no intention of posting anything, they just want more knowledge. That could turn a lot of those people off as well. They aren't needed, but they should not be excluded by any means.

The current system is fine, sometimes when a person comes in just to rile everyone up it is a nice change of pace. That is they don't just go out of their way to **** everyone off. Trolls you should just ban on the spot.

BTW: I run my own german car board and I go through the new users that join each day manually. Yes, it is a lot of work, but I tend to weed out potential trouble makers this way. You might consider doing the same if you have the time.

 

Personally I say you just delete those silly threads, or move them to another board. I mean really, what purpose does it serve for an Audi owner to come here and post a stupid thread like the one earlier. He even used a misleading subject to try to get people to read it. Obviously it worked because almost 50 people replied to his message, but I agree with you that these posts are useless and clutter up the board. I say just delete them instantly, it would only take a fraction of a second I assume. No need to penalize the loyal users or ask anyone to provide personal information because a) most people don't want to and b) most people would just make it up, etc. No one in their right mind is going to give up personal information on a forum like this unless they run an established reputable business like the sponsors, etc.

 

sounds like a good idea but how personal is detailed enough? am i IDENTIFIABLE here?

Ryan,
here is another good thought. having 2 Los Angeles runs in the past in a fairly short time, i finally can match some user name and the faces or at least their car. since then, i've meet some really good friends. Ron (Rodis) had a good idea during the run so we ended up taking pics with the face & their user name... we're still trying to figure out how to make it work. any thoughts??

some pics:
http://homepage.mac.com/arlingwang/PhotoAlbum54.html

 

Shank having done this before when running Sharky Extreme and going from having zero to having hundreds of thousands of registered users, it becomes a necessity in my opinion. At first everything is "open" and most people that frequent the boards are great. The larger you get, the more exposure you get, unfortunately, the more "trolls" you get also. It does make "registering" a bit more cumbersome but it is the only way forward in the end....

 

No ****, shank runs sharky extreme? I have been going to that site for years.

Edit: My bad, meant to say sharky runs sharky extreme. Now I know where the name comes from

 

Limitup,

No one existing will be penalized. Just thinking of ruling out yahoo and hotmail emails from being registered. At least that will prevent a lot of bs posts.

I'm listening to your thoughts. Perhaps it is "growing pains" and perhaps we should just DELETE troll posts on the spot.

Sharkster,
So did you wind up preventing hotmail/yahoo email addy's from being registered?

 

Aye I started the site back in 1998, sold it in 2000 and left in 2001 s if you read it back then a big thanks! I haven't been back since but one of my old free lancers runs it now, only on a much more restricted budget due to the hard times Still write for CPU Magazine www.cpumag.com though and do the occasional thing for TechTV to keep my foot in the industry.

 

Shank unfortunately I had to go to town. It was hard because everything was open in the begining. I had to turn off images let alone sigs with images due to abuse with ****. Had to nuke hotmail accounts (woulda done yahoo too had it been the thing then). Ban certain IPs, domains etc... Eventually we were able to just have "regular" posters get certain privaledges after a certain amount of time/posts, like allowing them images. The 'newbie' status (up to 100 posts) was VERY restrictive though in terms of what you could post.

 

I was going to say the site isn't as good as it used to be but I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Nice to meet the originator though, that site was something to be proud of back in the day and still is pretty good.

Out of curiousity, that site was not your main business was it?

 

Ah thanks man, I'm flattered. It was a fun ride back in the day. It sure was my job from 1998-2001. In '97-98 I started VoodooExtreme.com back in the early dawn of 3D graphics etc...