Should this site adopt an ID verification system?

[NotLostJustWandering]

I'd like to see what support there is for my idea that this site adopt an ID verification system to prevent banned members from rejoining as new members. I think this is a simple yes/no question, but of course if you would like to explain why you vote one way or another, feel free to post as well.

[llllllllll]

I think younger people should have the chance and a place to ask questions.It should be up to the "mature" adults to keep conversations in check and behave themselves. But I do propose a spelling test

[BfloBiFun]

I voted no ONLY because it would not be realistic, it would be nice, I am honest here & other adult sites but would not want to make my ID known to people outside of this "lifestyle" . . .

[BiJoe696]

No, just ignore anyone you think is a jerk.

[DuckiesDarling]

I voted no as well, while I completely understand the reasoning behind it all it would take is one hacker to get into the database and the lives of several people who are not "out" could be shattered.

[IanBorthwick]

I don't think anything as cataclysmic would happen if we did have one, and it would keep S&G from bugging me anymore. Seriously, you try to be nice to a person who is inherently a troll and a liar, and they simply won't leave you be. A little real world consequence would bring them in line quick, fast and in a hurry.

[ubersmack]

No, just ignore anyone you think is a jerk.

I like that idea.

[MtnMan]

I voted no and agree with those that said just ignore the jerks. Even tho, about four years ago, a whole colony of us fun, caring, people were victimized by one person who set out to destroy the chat site that essentially shunned him for being what he was: A jerk. So it goes. I hold the same philosophy for subjecting every person who ever flies on commercial airlines to humiliating body searches and scans when there are statistically miniscule incidents, and those could have been remedied if the airlines would implement the same safety procedures and armaments on planes as Israelies. But there ya go!

[falcondfw]

I say no. As a programmer, I know what a pain that system could be to implement. And, troll or not, whether we like it at times or not, in America we do have freedom of speech. Even hate speech.
And for those who will call me on asking Drew to ban a certain someone, guilty as charged.
IT got under my skin, because IT attacked, completely without provocation, 2 people I consider friends. I can be ... unkind when my friends are attacked.
That is what the ignore button is for.

[FinkDoodle]

I think anybody who agonizes over this question to the point where they believe a vote is required really needs to get out of the house more often.

It's an adult website . . it's not the Pentagon or the CIA . . . take a valium.

[darkeyes]

..daft idea, Atiq.. :)

[by~his~side]

I'm ok with the verification system. But then again, I'm not in the same position as some others as far as being outted (if information leaks.)

Trolls thrive on attention. I'm not saying ignoring them will prevent every future incident, but responding to them just encourages them.

Same applies to highlighting the Trolls quote when responding.
Why bother having Drew delete the post when it's quoted and highlighted in 8 other posts in the thread. {thats not a question requiring an answer....it just doesn't make sense to me}

~D~

[lizard-lix]

This is a very messy question, as others have said.

First, if any of the verification info is kept (intentionally or accidentally, and since I do computer security for a living, I can tell you more info gets inadvertently kept than anyone imagines unless it is specifically scrubbed), the site gains a HUGE liability.. Any leaks and it could be bad at a lot of levels, from outing folks to supplying information useful for everything from identity theft to blackmail. (think about all the credit card leaks)

Also, younger people come here for to help figure out who they are, any attempt to ID them may well chase them off, and that would be sad.

So, I agree with the folks who say ignore or ban specific ass pains (even if you have to do it multiple times). I host chat-rooms on a P2P network and this has worked well enough.

IMHO keep it simple...

Liz

[slipnslide]

Also a no. Who cares that much about banned members on a site like this?

[diB4u]

I voted yes because the banned memebers have been known to create problems and become trolls.

[12voltman59]

I don't think anything as cataclysmic would happen if we did have one, and it would keep S&G from bugging me anymore. Seriously, you try to be nice to a person who is inherently a troll and a liar, and they simply won't leave you be. A little real world consequence would bring them in line quick, fast and in a hurry.

Ian--I might suggest to you to make it so only those who are on a buddy list you compile of people on here can contact you--that does sorta sound like my old troll---he did stuff like that--as far as S&G and a few others are concerned on here---I have them on ignore---I am to the point that as soon as I see someone whose posts are of a certain nature---I automatically put them on IGNORE status---doing so does make life on here so much more enjoyable.

You may really want to consider doing both things.

I voted "NO" for many of the same reasons expressed by others.

[Bluebiyou]

No.
In the mid 80's I belonged to an adult (mostly gay) BBS (dial up!). Each new member had to meet personally with an established member and show ID (driver's license) to prove age.
While the personal meeting is much preferable to hackable info, perhaps a purchasable membership requiring a credit card... 1 cent or 1 dollar... would 'prove' adult status (ownership of a credit card) and provide traceable info...
but wait, if the info was traceable it would have to be retained, and can't kids even get debit cards?
Ah, even if the info were 'uncrackable' (doesn't exist), Drew would be overwhelmed with it's maintenance alone.
Besides,
on occasion many of us (including myself) can be very troll-ish on certain subjects.
In addition, modern crackers and trolls use IP address manipulation software, so their posts bounce around the world and appear to be coming from a different PC, often from a different country.
And then 'free speech'... we have to tolerate the troll posts in order to allow the timid voices; one of the ideals that makes the modern world so great, that I believe has helped humanity so much.

[NjbiGuy01]

Obviously, the element of security is very important. It does (on one hand) make sense to know if banned people return. Logging an I.P. address should do that anyway.

I used to believe people were inherently good, of-course that was before the internet...While this is a free site (and you do often get what you pay for), it would be nice to be able to make people accountable for their actions. Perhaps even knowing they MIGHT be accountable could assure a higher standard of treatment amongst members.

Sure, you can block people you don't like, but what about time wasters and jerks who don't respond to e-mails or lead you on in chat (or whatever) ? They should be reportable. 3-strikes your out (or some such system). I've had it with people who don't have the common decency to answer a simple e-mail. Maybe a separate "garbage dump" forum....lol

[boca.openminded]

as someone earlier posted "just ignore the jerks"...

Why cant you do that?

The more you talk / confront these people the more you are doing exactly what they want. They win & you lose!!!!

They only come back because they know they can pick a fight and someone will respond...

I remember the 1st day I was in the chat room a more experienced user sent me a private message about the "so called trouble makers" in the room. Nobody confronted them and a few minutes later they left...

The will not stick around talking to themselves!!

just my $.02...

oh, id verification - block ip addresses / not user names...

[welickit]

We would prefer that people who pose this type question be banned. Obviously you have a closed mind.:2cents: This is an open site, like it or not people have their right to post their opinion.

[abstruse_ric]

Screening? Sure, but I'll have you arrested if you touch my junk.

[SexualBoigamer2012]

OF COURSE!! I have had scammers hitailing me..... If they get banned, I DONT WANT THEM BACK!!!!!!

[NotLostJustWandering]

I respect the arguments about the danger of hackers, the limitations of a verification system's effectiveness, and the difficulty and expense of implementing an ID system. But I can not believe people actually think the Ignore button is sufficient troll protection, fail to see how much damage the trolls cause this site, or see a free speech issue in banning people who come here only to cause trouble. This last objection is not only asinine but totally irrelevent to the question at hand; Drew DOES ban members, over and over again, at the request of many members, and we are grateful for it; the issue is that banning members is a toothless bite as long as they are free to return under a different name whenever they like.

Maybe some of you are logging into a different bisexual.com? Or more likely, some of you actually spend very little time on the forums and are unaware of how bad the troll problem is. We seem to have 2 or 3 regulars who are back the day after they get banned. As for spotting and ignoring them: it would be one thing if the trolls spouted their abuse in their first post, but some of them are more clever than that and even long-time members have been having trouble spotting them at first. So we waste time offering advice and consolation to people who turn out not to be at all who they pretend to be, and get sucked into time-wasting dramas.

A little while back a new member was complaining about she felt ignored here despite introducing herself in the forum. I also got a sense when I first joined that this site is not very friendly. Now I understand why. As long as we are haunted by repeat offenders who keep returning in new guises, new members will be regarded with suspicion and not welcomed. This is not good for community building. This site is a shadow of what it could be, and according to the testimony of old-timers, it is a shadow of what it used to be. The trolls can not take all the blame for that, but they surely have a large part of it.

So perhaps the ID verification is not the solution. Perhaps there is no solution. But those of you who think there is no troll problem have your heads in the sand.

[NotLostJustWandering]

..daft idea, Atiq.. :)

Uhhh.... care to elaborate, Fran?

[NotLostJustWandering]

We would prefer that people who pose this type question be banned. Obviously you have a closed mind.:2cents: This is an open site, like it or not people have their right to post their opinion.

You two have just lost the last remnants of respect I used to have for you. Do you fail to see the contradiction in depicting this as a free speech issue and at the same time suggesting I be banned for asking the question?

Apart from your very informed postings on hand-tooling dildoes, the main contribution I see you two make on this site is pissing on other people's ideas without offering any constructive alternative. So from now on, when I post an idea, you two can keep your two cents for a rainy day. I wouldn't pay an Egyptian piastre for them.

[darkeyes]

Uhhh.... care to elaborate, Fran?

Much of it has already been said Atiq. This is a site for entertainment owned by a private individual as I have been told more than once, not a social service.. it is an open community but it is not a pressure group.. it seeks to inform and help people contact and keep in touch with those of their own kind and families of bisexual people. It attracts, at least in the first instance many people for reasons of their own, some of course will be trolls.. some will become long standing members of this community some will pass through at a rate of knots.. but we want to encourage as many to at least find out the delights or otherwise of the site not put them off.. ID verification would almost certainly put off many, in part for fear of discovery, in part because many, particularly the young and less well off cannot provide the kind of ID verification you ask for, indeed cannot provide any kind of ID whatsoever.. also because the more we verify the more personal details are on some alien computer far from where we live, and outwith our control.. of course all computers are subject to hacking, but a single computer with a huge database is particularly attractive and vulnerable to this if for no other reason than most hackers are NOT nice people however much the telly or film tells us so and many would out of their own personal prejudice and bigotry wish to do us harm..

Far too many of us are not "out", and therefore can offer themselves up as hostages to fortune.. there are those in the media and other anti gay, anti bi, anti trans interest groups who would gladly love to have details of everyone on site to expose and humiliate.. therefore to encourage people to come and help them as best we can through the travails of being bisexual or anything else considered not str8, we cannot afford to make things easy for them.. so many are not in a position to formally join a properly constituted LGBT group because that for them is highly dangerous because of their family and personal circumstances... a few trolls are not a high price to pay for having a place such as this where people can be anonymous or as open as they wish to be and not have to fret about exposure and its consequences... and I for one actually dont mind trolls.. I have no paranoia about them.. occasionally they have raised what I think are decent issues.. sometimes brainlessly, but not always.. and occasionally have made a half decent contribution to debate..there are other ways of dealing with them.. and besides.. what is ID verification? ID of any kind can be falsified just like anything else..

Don't give trollies an importance they dont deserve.. start going down the ID route as you suggest you present them with a very large and very important victory over this community..

[NotLostJustWandering]

Well put, Fran. I guess understanding of these things doesn't come naturally to me because I am in many ways a reckless individual. The word "caution" does not rank high in my vocabulary. I do what I want, don't give a fuck what anybody thinks, and apart from a few salutory gestures towards staying out of jail, don't modify my behavior a whole lot out of concern for it. This is one of the funny ways in which, despite all my animosities towards it, I kind of feel at home in Egypt. Here the attitude is that if God doesn't want you to die today you are invulnerable and if He does want you to die nothing can save you, so why bother wasting time with things like grounding high-voltage devices? :bigrin:

[darkeyes]

Well put, Fran. I guess understanding of these things doesn't come naturally to me because I am in many ways a reckless individual. The word "caution" does not rank high in my vocabulary. I do what I want, don't give a fuck what anybody thinks, and apart from a few salutory gestures towards staying out of jail, don't modify my behavior a whole lot out of concern for it. This is one of the funny ways in which, despite all my animosities towards it, I kind of feel at home in Egypt. Here the attitude is that if God doesn't want you to die today you are invulnerable and if He does want you to die nothing can save you, so why bother wasting time with things like grounding high-voltage devices? :bigrin:

The word caution doesnt rank that high in my vocabulary either, at least not on a personal level.. but I am quite cautious about other people, at least much more than most give me credit for because I dont like to hurt unnecessarily.. I am open and outgoing and would rather be liked but if I am not then thats my look out.. and I do care what certain other people think of me.. not the great mass of humanity and especially its bigots and certainly not the authorities of this fair if somewhat cold and damp land of mine.. I have many animosities toward the country I live in also.. and I was born and raised here..

Since I dont believe in God I'm afraid he/she or it doesn't play much in my outlook.. but in a way I agree with what you say of Egyptians.. if my kismet is to go today then go I shall and there is bugger all I can do about it.. and if not? Brill!! I'll stick around having fun and boring the arse of people with my opinionated and often forceful get right up peoples noses beliefs.. but if it was my time to go.. I'd like to think they will take me kicking and screaming out of this world.. thats how I've lived, and when my time comes, I hope its how I die..:)

[welickit]

Don't expect us to stop posting anytime soon. You have an IGNORE button so put it to use.:2cents:

[DrBimind]

As a new member to the site I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...one of the reasons I joined was because no credit card "for ID verification" was required as I do not like giving my credit card info to someone unless I'm buying something. I've been on other sites where "trolls" and others have caused a ruckus just for the attention it brings them. I don't know Drew but am sure he is busy enough with maintaining the site as a FREE site and as one responder stated, "you get what you pay for". Part of this being a FREE site is the FREEDOM that goes with it...and that's the danger/advantage of FREEDOM..you have to take the bad with the good sometimes. As folks in an "alternative" lifestyle that has it's distractors, shouldn't we have a little tougher skin to begin with? If we let every negative comment bug us, haven't we let the commenter won already? I'm not saying it's easy dealing with such people, actions or comments but like many have said there is an IGNORE button to use. Use it when needed, report the offenders and pray for them as they probably need it.

"Love everyone...Trust no one"

[cliffordmontero]

I voted no, however i could be persuaded depending on the verification method. I was a member of a site that required verification via photo. The photo had to include your screenname and the websites name as well as part of your body. And the writing had to be hand written . . . no typing it over an existing photo. Many people were verified with pictures of their fingers holding a notebook with the written information on it. Its not a perfect system, but the extra step would make our site less appealing to trolls.

[tristancir]

Nothing is perfect. Adopting such a system would be more trouble than its worth. Why make life hard for the majority because of a few that make trouble? Sure, banned members might rejoin. But is it really such a big problem?

Better solution: reward good members with a special individual keyword that they can use to access "advanced" areas. That way members must earn the keyword first. And they do this by being good members. It makes rejoining pointless since they would have to earn their way into the good stuff anyway.

There are also some technology things that can be done using IP address and other such things. They can be defeated but require technical knowledge that most don't have.

[NotLostJustWandering]

Better solution: reward good members with a special individual keyword that they can use to access "advanced" areas. That way members must earn the keyword first. And they do this by being good members. It makes rejoining pointless since they would have to earn their way into the good stuff anyway.


I think this is a good idea. To avoid overburderning Drew, the earning of the status could have happen automatically after a certain length of time if no one complains about one behaving like a troll. It could also be applied retroactivally to everyone who has already been here for that length of time.

I think most trolls expose themselves within a month, and therefore the time length could be safely set to six weeks.

Any other thoughts on this? Maybe I should start a new poll on this idea instead. The community has consistently voted "No" 6-4 on the ID verification idea, so I think we can lay it to rest now.

[NotLostJustWandering]

NotLostJustWandering if you do not like this site and how it is run, or other people voicing their opinions then by all means stop posting or leave.

I do not have a problem with people voicing their opinions here. I have a problem with people coming here pretending to be someone they're not, making up a fictitious character and wasting our time asking for help with that character's imaginary questions and dramas, getting to know members here well enough to push their buttons, and all just for the sadistic pleasure of stirring up drama. The net result, must I say it again, is that we are suspicious of new members and are not as welcoming as we ought to be. This is my biggest issue with the troll problem.

I did not propose this idea in the spirit of complaining, I did it in the spirit of wanting to make the site better and hope that such a thing is possible if we put our heads together and work out a solution.

Maybe you think my leaving the site would be an improvement, and I'm sure you're not alone. That's life for an outspoken, opinionated and sometimes brash mofo like myself. But on the other hand, I have lots of private messages and posts from other members thanking me for my contributions here, both in the forums and in private messages. So thanks for the 11 piastres, but I'm sticking around inshallah.

[darkeyes]

NotLostJustWandering if you do not like this site and how it is run, or other people voicing their opinions then by all means stop posting or leave.

Why be so combative? There really is no need.

Atiq isnt complaining about the great majority of members, merely those who try and deliberatly offend, disrupt and destroy.. our trollies.. how to stop them doing so.. most agree in that aim, the question is whether what he has suggested is the way to go.. I have my doubts about you but I wouldn't have you banned even if u r a Trollie.. freaking out about them and banning them only encourages them..witness all the angst so many have, and all the time we waste discussing such nonentities.. I dont think its worth the effort and gives to them an importance they crave but hardly deserve..