SUGGESTION BOX

Sorry, been busy, but have not forgotten about this.

 

There is a 255 character limit in signatures that may be blocking you from adding more characters in order to link another photo.

 

We had to disable that function. Check out this thread -- http://www.whitewomenblackmen.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2532

However, that doesn't mean it will always be this way. I'll have to check out the options in the new version of this forum's software to see if it's more configurable than it is now. Right now it can only be ON for everyone or OFF for everyone.

 

Yes, I've installed the latest version of the forum software on a test server and I'm testing it out. After that I'll have to modify it to fit the look of this site. Or - if this other new software we (some programmers and I) are looking at is easy to work with, I may just implement the new forum with that -- which would take longer.

As far as private messaging goes, the three biggest issues with that are:

1. There are people who do not wish to be contacted privately. Either they are in a relationship or they're just here to discuss topics. The women would get hit on constantly, and arguments would take on a whole new level than you've seen posted publicly. It would be hard to track who said what to whom when a large portion of it would be private messages.

2. Racists, troublemakers, and folks with personal vendettas will sign up accounts, harass people privately, and be harder to identify.

3. It would defeat and kill the personals area which supports this site financially. And you'd start seeing lots of personal ads being posted in the forum. And that same evil webmaster who thinks he is "some kind of master of the web or something," will have to remove them and get all sorts of bad PR.

One of the new software packages we are looking at may make some of this irrelevant, because everyone will have enhanced profiles, and will be able to visit different areas of the site without having to sign up separately. So you'll most likely start seeing posts from the folks who have stayed exclusively in the personals area.

Access to different areas will be controlled by groups and permissions. I'll look into whether I can setup a special group for long term members in good standing. Perhaps give this group access to private messaging in the forums only, and the paid members will have universal access to contact anyone. But this would only be if the new forum software allowed that -- some members ON and other members OFF. It may also be something we could hack if it's not, but that's a different story.

I'll let you all know what we come up with before it's implemented.

 

It is possible to lock down the entire forum and force everyone to register an account for read access. But then you'd only have lots of registered lurkers instead of guest lurkers - who also have the ability to post.

Yes, there are many ways to lock down the forum and make it more secure if it came to that -- from creating new entry-level groups with limited access and admin only approval -- to extremes like jumpboxes, ghost boards, and "malicious" payloads (which I do not do).

However, at the moment the troll problem has not reached the level where I feel it needs to come to any of that. It's way more hassle for them than it is for me - time wise.

Currently, I just follow a basic escalation procedure (depending on how serious the violation) of:

- warnings
- post(s) removal
- bans (IP, email, screen name, or all three)
- redirects
- server level blocks
- contacting a person's ISP or hosting provider
- contacting legal or law enforcement authorities