| Subject: Re: Email addresses - yeah, but read on.... |
Author:
Lynn
|
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Date Posted: 13:31:39 07/14/04 Wed
In reply to:
Ummmm again
's message, "Re: Email addresses" on 12:54:40 07/13/04 Tue
>If someone can type their email address into the text
>of their post, disabling the feature which allows them
>to enter it in the "Email address" box serves no
>purpose.
Yes, I totally agree with you. But understand that it's an issue of having the conscious choice for privacy. Sometimes people who post frequently on forums are on "autopilot" and are used to typing in their email addresses. Some forums even require it. I have found that, even though it does say "optional" in the text box, most people were typing in their email addresses anyway.
Well let me tell you what happens in cyberspace. Bots troll forums like this for email addresses, and before you know it, you've got spam in the name of ArchWired or just spam in general. And recently there were a few incidents where someone had innocently typed in their email address and had been hounded by an outsider (not a regular member of the forum). If you've been reading the forum for a while, this was NOT the incident that happened a couple of months ago, this was something different and much more serious. When you put your email address out there, you should know what you may be getting into. I'm not a forum cop and don't want to play that role. We're all adults, but there's a certain responsibility I have as a webmaster. I felt that it was important to protect the privacy of my readers at the sacrifice of a free-flowing email communication between them.
That's why I decided to delete email addresses in general from the site. If someone REALLY REALLY wants others to contact them, then they can type their email address in the body of their message. I know it's a bit obtuse, but after what happened, I felt that it was my responsibility.
Anyway, I wish I could remove the "E-mail address" box from the forum input fields, but unfortunately Voy has its limitations and it's not possible to customize the input boxes to that level (because it's freeware, ya know...)
In the future I hope to launch a new forum (maybe one of those nice PHP ones) and thing will be better.
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