I'd like a forum with real names.
I'd also like Ed McMahon to knock on my door with a 7 figure check or have the new off shore bank account that Rachael Uchitel now surely has.
Some posters claim they have a reason for needing to stay anonymous. I'm not sure if that's because they've done some people wrong in the past or what. Maybe this thread will help us understand why some people are "anonies".
I have had people send emails to my wife, had then insult my wife, go through my business records, insinuate that I had a warrant out for my arrest, call my employer, make YouTube videos ridiculing me.....sign me up for endless email lists.....all possible because I disagreed with them online over something AND they knew who I was.
Anyone here remember the famous RSB troll Burntjall or something like that? This is a classic stalking example on the net. When this person picked me as a target I started getting strange phone calls, weird emails, spam out the ass and of course the never ending stalking on RSB.
I wasn't the only one that this nutjob stalked but I had my share of trouble with this nincompoop.
When people don't know who you are they don't stalk you, you aren't worth it to them.
You know why a lot more industry folks don't participate here?
Simply because they have a lot more to lose than the people they are talking to in most cases. All it takes is one good flame war or one determined troll and sure enough they have said something that they can't take back as it's now part of the permanent record.
EVEN if AZ were expunge and delete ALL YOUR POSTS - Google and Yahoo, and all the other search engines are storing everything their spiders touch, as well so is the FBI with their own little spiders out there soaking up all the words on the internet.
Don't fool yourselves for a second to think that you can say or do something on the net that isn't stored somewhere.
And now there are people implementing the type of algorithms that can do very deep human like searches into databases previously unreachable by normal search engine technology.
The last two times I got into a relationship I suggested to my girlfriends that they google me and find out how I deal with online arguments. I had to put it out there before they did it anyway. I googled the girl I wanted to date so I could find out about her. This is the world we live in now and it's not going to get better.
Remember Minority Report? Remember when Tom Cruise's character walked through the city and everything talked to him by name because they scanned his eyes? Well in the future, and probably in the not so distant future, this is the kind of thing that will happen for advertising and for "security". Any hope of real privacy will be gone if you want to LIVE in the everyday world. Your only hope will be to take yourself off the grid and by doing so you will make yourself a target of observation by the "grid".
Look it up.
Right now there are developers making Iphone apps that track your buying activity and mesh that with participating stores so that when you Iphone (and you presumably) are near a store that the software thinks you shop at then the store beams out a greeting to let you know of a sale. That's not far removed from the government being able to track your every movement through a variety of methods.
But aside from all that is simply the very real danger of pyschos and criminals targeting you based on what you reveal.
I was amazed a few years ago that I could go on Google Earth and see the condo I was staying at in Las Vegas with the rental van outside of it in near real time.
So if I were a criminal mastermind then I could set up a clever monitoring system to pick my targets from forums and observe much about them and their lives by what they reveal online. I could know when they would be on vacation, that they often get packages delivered and what those packages are, I could case their house from Google Earth and Google Maps and Google streetview, I could make my plan using real time traffic data complete with construction updates, etc......
In other words the information age is great but it has a darkside to it in that the information that makes our lives "easier" also makes our lives easier to access.
And the one last place where we can be free of that is these discussion forums. By not putting our business on the street we minimize the risk of becoming targets.
And the other thing is that people just don't need to know who you are unless you need to tell them. Me, I sell things, I have to be responsible for the things I sell and I want people to be able to find me when they want things. So I accept the fact that I can be a target as a trade off for being accessible. Some of the other people on here who are known and who frequently get in people's "face" online should truly consider their actions because someday some pyscho might look them up. And no one wants that no matter how tough they think they are.
Anyway, I vote no. But I vote FOR a better community that policies itself by voting the bad apples off the island. Right now the only way to do that is to REPORT BAD POSTS. If you think a post is over the line then report it. It's right next to the REP button. When the mods get enough of those reports then they warn and ban - real simple.
You all in the USA remember the community watch programs? YOu know where neighbors took turns actually watching their neighborhoods for suspicious activity? That did more to lower crimes like burglaries than anything else ever tried. Eventually criminals had to get much smarter about how they robbed houses because the neighbors were looking out for each other.
So let's all just look out for each other. If someone is being a nit then report them. If enough people agree then let them go away for a while. It works for kindergarten and works for forums.
