Spam/Nuisance Posts

You may not see 'nuisance' posts by another logged in member, but that doesn't mean they don't happen. Usually these posts are removed too quickly for the average member to see them. Also, can we define what you mean by 'nuisance'? Are we referring to spam or what? As for other people's sites, it differs on who is running the site and for what purposes. For instance, a company who offers forums as part of their business (ie. to encourage interaction between customers) is quite different from a site that is for and by the users. Businesses have much more freedom to create top-down rules, because it is after all, their reputation on the line, and can create their own rules according to their own tastes: and force their users to like it or go home. Here however, the user is in fact, the 'leader' (democracy rules) and a bottom-up system is in place. It's up to everyone to decide what is ok and what is not in our online community - and as such, harder to agree on both the rules and how to implement them. I think we're also missing an important part of the argument: this site has grown and changed over the years, and it's needs and wants have changed. Perhaps at one time it wasn't necessary or important to have a set of rules which everyone obeyed - the honour system was in place - and now the site and its members are so large, we need something a little more structured. We also need to recognise that the term 'site administrators' is wrong - purely because of the plural. Grant is the only administrator. There are a handful of moderators, who can do slightly more than normal registered users (see the spam lists for instance, or see what other pages members visit). However, we can do no more removal of posts than everyone else: vote, mark as spam, or report to Grant directly. I remove posts for instance, when they are clearly spam - moderate posts up or down depending on how useful they are to the community, and that's about it. Perhaps we need to create a set of 'rules' or guidelines, that help us decide what makes a good post/helpful post - but even then, we'd still have to get everyone to use it, and you can't force people to do it, no matter how you structure the site. For the last point, Walter can sue, because while the site does not post their real name (because they didn't put it in the field), the site still records important info about them, like their IP address. IPs can be traced back to city, state, country, and with a good court order, probably a lot more than that too. Moppet eyes now on sale at Puppets in Melbourne