On 30 Mar 2013 at 5:29pm bloke wrote:
Webbo - Why don't you take a leaf out of Wikipedia. Post up the IP address of any unregistered user alongside the name. No IP for registered users. That won't deter the genuine casual visitor.
On 30 Mar 2013 at 6:08pm Southover Queen wrote:
Brilliant idea, bloke. Then we can all see that the semi-literate morons who scattergun nonsense everywhere are actually all posting from the same internet connection.
On 30 Mar 2013 at 7:26pm Local wrote:
And from mobiles / tablets?
On 30 Mar 2013 at 9:05pm Retard wrote:
Fink the for off you bee ferry appy towgether as that's all their is off ewe that whine when others join your little gang of intelligent posters hound us fikies , just a different spin on your bulling .
On 30 Mar 2013 at 9:33pm Seredipity wrote:
Oh no, the tosser is back. Borrowed a friends connection have we little boy?
On 31 Mar 2013 at 12:24am bloke wrote:
What about them local?
On 31 Mar 2013 at 9:04am Kettle wrote:
Im late to this debate, so may not have understood properly - I usually use the name kettle, but if I am posting information that gives away too much personal information, so someone could work out where I live or who I am, I use a different name. Would the new system stop me doing this?
On 31 Mar 2013 at 12:56pm Southover Queen wrote:
I hope not, Kettle. I very occasionally use a different name for exactly the same reason. I think what I'll do is register the other name to a different email address, as it's quite rare that this alter ego pops up so it won't be too much of a hassle to log out and in again with a different user name. But equally you could just post as a guest and keep the name Kettle separate by logging out.
On 31 Mar 2013 at 5:56pm Kettle wrote:
Sounds fine then.
On 31 Mar 2013 at 7:26pm You Cannot Be Serious wrote:
Different names, alter egos. What are you people on? Far too much to think about because you haven't got the courage to talk straight. You really are a sad bunch of people.
On 31 Mar 2013 at 8:21pm jrsussex wrote:
Dose the above points not invalidate the debate for registration, if we can continue to post under different pseudonyms what would be the reason for Webbo bothering to alter the present format?
If posters can continue to use any name by registering different e-mail addresses then I say leave well alone. What I try to do, and mostly succeed, is to ignore entirely those posts that are clearly a wind-up or made by a dickhead. That way I lose no sleep over brainless people.
On 31 Mar 2013 at 8:41pm Southover Queen wrote:
The most important advantage would be that people who only post under one user name (as do I) would have that user name reserved so that the aforementioned dickheads cannot impersonate them.
I'm not going to explain to Mr/Ms Serious above yet again why one might (a) wish not to post using one's own name or (b) very occasionally use a different name. I do it for exactly the same reasons that Kettle does: occasionally a topic or a question wanders into territory where you would inevitably give too many clues about your identity and allow mischief makers to find you. I have suffered the consequences of the peabrains who think it's funny to disrupt your business and I'd prefer it not to happen again.
At the moment the trolls can and do impersonate regular posters on here, and that means that you sometimes can't tell whether you're interacting with jrsussex or Deelite or someone else putting other views in their virtual mouths. Once your user name is reserved for you and only you, no-one else will be able to impersonate you.
So that means that the trolls will be forced to post as guests (which we can all ignore) or faff around logging in and out with different user names, either of which will spoil most of their fun and they'll go away. I know whose posts I'm interested in reading (you are amongst them) and I can just ignore the rest.
On 31 Mar 2013 at 10:56pm Pedant wrote:
Forgive me for asking, but do you post under one name as you say SQ, or under more than one name as you also say? Very confusing. ba.
I think jr has the right approach; lose no sleep.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 9:23am Metatron wrote:
Why donā??t you get Webbo to start a new forum with a limited membership based on IQ?
So all illiterate and educationally inferior people to you canā??t join in.
Has this all come about by Cyber Bulling aimed at particular people?
Perhaps those people should review the way the view others and stop being so bloody rude.
You reap what you sew.
I for one am fed up of reading the opinions of those who think they know better and have an opinion on everything and everybody.
Just keep it balanced webbo as we come on here for entertainment not to be lectured.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 9:35am Southover Queen wrote:
Because very very occasionally a question is asked to which I have the answer in my capacity as a local business owner, but which would reveal far more about me than I am comfortable doing. Just as Kettle says. I would guess that 99.9% of my posts are under the Southover Queen user name.
What I am certainly never doing is creating "sock puppets" so that a poster can pick an angry fight with himself (which I'm sure has happened): in the new regime where such people can only post as guests and where their IP address is revealed next to their post (as bloke suggests) you'll be able to see what's happening in an instant. Trolls only want to disrupt online communities, and this would go a long way to stopping them doing so here.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 1:34pm Clifford wrote:
Metatron wrote: 'I for one am fed up of reading the opinions of those who think they know better and have an opinion on everything and everybody.'
Quite right. We want to read comments from people who know nothing and have no opinion on anything. That would be really interesting.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 2:32pm Metatron wrote:
Thanks Clifford
glad to help you make your petty point scoring comments.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 3:09pm jrsussex wrote:
Clifford, Pedant and Metatron I am with you, you cannot rule people out simply because their academic skills are lower than others or that the view differs from yours or that their comments are stupid. I have genuinely known a man in my life who to his dying day could not read or write yet left behind a largish company with over £3m in assets so I would most certainly have listened to his opinion on most matters. Whereas at the other end of the scale I have a relative who has several degrees in various subjects plus a masters but hasn't got an ounce of common sense and invariably when asked to carry out the simplest of every day tasks by his wife fails miserably.
The posters to avoid are the wind-up merchants and those that are simply idiots. Given the time I have been using this forum ( which I enjoy very much) I can mostly pick them out and choose not to indulge them by answering their posts. I am sure most of the genuine posters do the same.
On 1 Apr 2013 at 4:23pm Just a thought wrote:
If webbo enforced compulsory registration , those that want it could , and those that don't, wouldn't , here's the trick , if you are happy to register then you can view the site and write on it , if you don't register then you would be able to view only , discuss ,
On 2 Apr 2013 at 3:09pm Just a thought wrote:
Tumbleweed .................. Maybe you don't appreciate common sense , just trying to help .
On 2 Apr 2013 at 3:29pm truth wrote:
im anonymous i hack all of you .have you not got any thing else to talk about.
On 2 Apr 2013 at 4:07pm Olittlegreen wrote:
An IP address can easily be spoofed, changed or similar.
On 3 Apr 2013 at 9:26am bloke wrote:
They can't be spoofed (that is impersonate someone else's IP address without their knowledge). They are assigned by your ISP; either statically or dynamically. If you're assigned a dynamic IP it is on a lease that has an expirary period which means that if you connect, disconnect and reconnect you'll often be assigned the same IP address again. This applies to mobile connections too. You can of course connect to this forum via a proxy, VPN or Tor in order to present a different IP address to the one assigned by the ISP, but you would have to be both technically savy and pretty dedicated to the idea of making yourself more unidentifiable than usual to do this. If the IP address was posted for unregistered users it would make it harder but not impossible for someone to post under multiple identites. Certainly it would cut down the occasions where someone posts 3 or 4 comments in a row pretending to be from different people. The problem wouldn't go away, no. But no solution is perfect. Even if registration was compulsory there would be nothing to stop someone registering multiple users under multiple email addresses. The IP system is good enough for Wikipedia.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 10:46pm Cliffe Hanger wrote:
FWIW, I think displaying the IP address idea is a good one, particularly if Webbo has software that can determine the location of the IP address. That way we could see who is posting from Lewes, or nearby, and who is posting from elsewhere. If someone used a proxy, it could appear to come from anywhere in the world. I think even the most hardened troll would struggle to find a proxy server that masked their identity, and yet was based in Lewes!