Should we allow for users?

With the free speech conversation in the other thread and just having to activate an account flagged by our anti-spam system because it was using a throw away email and a VPN, it got me thinking... and I thought I'd like the feedback of our esteemed member base (including those who conceal themselves in such ways) on those thoughts.

On the one hand, I can fully understand the desire to be anon for various reasons. Avoiding spam emails from us (which we don't actually send), speaking more openly knowing that no one knows who you are, preventing violation of personal details by us (which we don't do) or by an outside breach of our security (vlad forbid).

But on the other hand it makes enforcement of punishing anyone doing anything severely illegal with our site nearly impossible, at the very least implausible. If someone were to sign up in such a way and make real and severe threats to one of our members, for instance, we'd have no way to report them to authorities for the sake of that member's protection.

It also makes really banning anyone impossible, as all they have to do is use one of the same methods to make a new account... again and again and again. Which is also why many forums don't allow such throw away emails to register.

Anyway... your guys' thoughts on this subject?

[Edited to remove my thoughts for now. Edit 2: My thoughts are below in another post...]

my views are known

this is not the fbi, no court and no rehabilitation institute.
imo, only spam should be deleted and anything else goes.
but I said this before. so, pls don't send PMs anymore, thank you.

I think the current system works well enough and doesn't need to change. Yeah there are a few insulting/stirring/spamming posts but the forum seems to have a natural way of dealing with them and sooner or later they are either forgotten, ignored, or they just lose interest.

To me, this low censorship system works and I think most posters can work out the difference between someone with a genuine grievance and someone just shit stirring or spamming.

Username Taken wrote:^^ For once I don't get the joke, Garry.

A Crabtree comment is no laughing matter

potty wrote:this is not the fbi, no court and no rehabilitation institute.
imo, only spam should be deleted and anything else goes.
but I said this before. so, pls don't send PMs anymore, thank you.

Then a question to you for clarification... how would you feel about someone publicly posting on here your real name, address, the address of your family, your workplace, etc along with slanderous information accusing you of something horrendous and encouraging others to find you/your family and commit acts of violence?

should this be allowed and protected under free speech?

OrangeDragon wrote:On the one hand, I can fully understand the desire to be anon for various reasons. Avoiding spam emails from us (which we don't actually send), speaking more openly knowing that no one knows who you are, preventing violation of personal details by us (which we don't do) or by an outside breach of our security (vlad forbid).

You might not but you are not able to guarantee monopoly access to this data. If the forum gets hacked then its out of your hands. Stuff like that happens all the time. phpbb.com itself was literally compromised just a couple of days ago and all their data leaked. All of it. https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=1186015

I think you're approaching it from the wrong angle. Users don't act this way to protect themselves against you personally, they do so to protect their data. In my personal opinion they should have that right.

OrangeDragon wrote:But on the other hand it makes enforcement of punishing anyone doing anything severely illegal with our site nearly impossible, at the very least implausible. If someone were to sign up in such a way and make real and severe threats to one of our members, for instance, we'd have no way to report them to authorities for the sake of that member's protection.

What authorities would you report them to, OD? The Cambodian Cyber War Team? I do not believe in any way that this would be effective. If you ban VPN providers and throwaway email accounts I can still sign up and send you threats using a WiFi in a public space and your law enforcement would lead nowhere. I don't think the quoted portion is a valid argument. It doesn't serve the purpose the way as you formulated it.

OrangeDragon wrote:It also makes really banning anyone impossible, as all they have to do is use one of the same methods to make a new account... again and again and again. Which is also why many forums don't allow such throw away emails to register.

Again, so does using WiFi in a public space. I would bet my money on the fact that a large portion of your traffic already origins from public space WiFis. It's not like you'll ban the entire ISP's IP block, and nearly all IP numbers are assigned dynamically in Cambodia. Most ISP's you have to pay extra for getting a static one, and I say most because at the same time as I am unaware of one which will hand them (IPv4) out for free it is not impossible.

One thing that you have to also take into consideration is that some ISP's will have multiple users routed to the Internet via the same exit IP. Smart and Digicom do this, just to mention two examples. Ezecom has proxy.ezecom.com.kh and proxy1.ezecom.com.kh as exits, anybody in their WAN can tunnel through these HTTP proxies. If you ban those then a large chunk of your user base will be unable to access your site.

Anonymity should be maximum because everything that you brought up against it is void.

OrangeDragon wrote:Then a question to you for clarification... how would you feel about someone publicly posting on here your real name, address, the address of your family, your workplace, etc along with slanderous information accusing you of something horrendous and encouraging others to find you/your family and commit acts of violence?

should this be allowed and protected under free speech?

That's not our or your decision to make. This is decided by the courts in the country where you host your site. If you have any legal questions I would recommend asking an expert of law in that country, not your forum members.