Moderation and anonymous members/posters have killed dpreview

Hello to all of you.
Congratulations and thanks for the initiative of Bob and particularly thanks to Iliah for joining this community.
I registered because of 2 reasons: bobn2 & Iliah Borg. The content of their posts and reactions on dpr were high-level and always worth reading.

Moderation and anonymous members/posters have killed dpreview…

My reaction is based on the two above quotes, where I fully agree with, especially about the power-horny anonymous coward moderators... Jim Kasson was one of the positive exceptions. He did not hide behind anonymity and what he wrote about photography was often interesting...
I believe that the number of complaints addressed to Amazon by people having been terrorized by mods on Dpr outnumbered by far the complaints towards amazon about closing Dpreview.

Moderation should be limited to avoid and delete personal attacks, rudeness, racism, and eventually, topics that have nothing to do with the roots of that particular forum, in this case, photography.

I am convinced that, in order to make a successful forum, members should post under their real name or at least with their real name and website in profile. This would benefit to the content quality and reduce trolling, rudeness and personal attacks.
Of course, by enabling anonymous posting, clicks are multiplied by a huge factor, and “clicks” is the main argument commercial websites like dpr handle to contact potential advertisers or to please their boss…

Kindest regards,
Stany Buyle
www.fotografie.cafe

That doesn't mean much at all unless you also suggest how the real names could be verified as being legitimate.

For example, what would stop a malicious actor creating another account on another forum and using your supposed username and website in their signature?

Very easy. Name, address, website and phone number, only visible for forum staff.

That doesn't explain how forum staff would be able to verify the personal details are accurate for the person registering to join the forum.

I assume you are aware it is not difficult to falsify the personal information you are suggesting.

I must have missed it, did hell just freeze over. Why not issue all members with a GPS locator.

Not going to happen.

Danny.

not sure what you're trying to say sagittarius. You posted just a copy of StanyBuyle's post and so my reply would be the same.

Or a membership fee for active members.

[/quot]
What do you think staff will do? Send you a letter? No way in the world I will give my personal information to any forums web site.

Yes, of course...
smileys have to be added...

That was discussed over at the old DPR after the closure announcement and got very little support for obvious reasons.

Moderation, especially banning members for unacceptable behaviour, would be very difficult or non-existent. In many cases, banned members would argue (whether justifiably or not is irrelevant) that they were unfairly banned and so threaten legal action if their membership fees were not returned.

I doubt any forum admins anywhere would want that type of risk and associated headaches.

But you would not be able to verify that the person holding up the passport and driver's licence is the actual person sitting at the keyboard registering to join the forum :-)

According to your DPReview profile, you have not posted anything in the last 12 month. So why worry about moderation? I don't. And I have not had a single issue with moderators.

On the other hand, letting banned users pay for the moderation work they created in order to return would make a lot of sense. Pay $5 and promise to behave...

The issue is of course that one time e-mail addresses are free, so this would only be a cost to people with a posting history and username they value.

Trolling and users prone to inappropriate behavior will always exist, but if there is a fee for active members many of them will not register

If you keep letting banned members return for free (by not having to return their original fees) then that doesn't discourage bad behaviour because members know they will be allowed back into the forums for free.