Where Do You Live?

[Harold Gough]

It seems to me that, for practical reasons, some members will need to be a little less shy about their country of residence.

Harold
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Committed to the use of fine grain colour reversal film and manual focus lenses.

[DaveW]

Seems to be a reluctance to put in their country and town on a lot of Web sites Harold. Then people ask for places to obtain goods which you respond to only to find the source is inappropriate for that country. Why cannot the country and town be a mandatory requirement on Web sites for display under peoples avatar?

DaveW

[lauriek]

It's an unfortunate fact that the more information a website demands, the less people will register.. Given the pretty specialised nature of this site and the low overall membership number we can't afford to put off those who are interested! (That's my personal opinion, not an official admin response!)
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http://www.laurieknight.net/

[Harold Gough]

[rjlittlefield]

If location matters, just ask and explain why you care. That way you'll get correct and relevant info. People move, go on trips, buy specimens, and visit zoos.

--Rik

[DQE]

I hate to bring up some difficulties I've personally had after revealing location and other personal data on internet forums, in view of the very friendly and very enjoyable character of this exceptionally informative forum. I hope doing so is constructive and appropriate. If not, please accept my apology and ignore this post!

Briefly, over the years I've experienced or witnessed several stressful situations due to members having revealed personal residence address information, real names, e-mails, etc. The forums where difficulties developed were about as specialized as this forum - one was a small forum for serious fans of the music of Joan Baez, another was a medical support forum for people with chronic pain conditions, and another forum was for people who are interested in realistic 747-400 airliner flight simulators and the real aircraft.

The most stressful situation occurred when one of these forums dissolved after a member was physically stalked at her home by a forum member with apparent intent to harm or at least terrorize the woman. It wasn't much fun being on the phone with the victim while the stalker was (very convincingly) just outside her home. The police were unable to be of much help in the absence of actual physical injury and since the stalker disappeared as they arrived . We soon learned that the stalker had registered under multiple identities as a part of his tactics and there was no easy way to tell who was real and who was just a stalker puppet. The stalker eventually just faded out but his victim was not left with much peace of mind, nor were the rest of the forum members.

Now that some time has passed since the stalking incident, I think it was in retrospect an improbable, worst-case scenario and that it should be ignored on statistical grounds. Perhaps it was like being mugged while shopping in a downtown area of a city - sort of like getting struck by lightning. Yet it does stick in my mind as you might imagine.

In another forum, there was a forum member who took it upon himself to systematically threaten and harass selected forum members as a part of his desire to control the forum and manipulate his forum status. The moderator was unfortunately unwilling to exert any control over the forum or this situation. Sometimes this type of person is called an "internet troll" since they troll the internet to disrupt otherwise peaceful forums, etc. Sometimes this harassment is done via "private messages", e-mails and the like instead of visible forum posts. A fairly common tactic is to register under multiple false identities and false IP addresses and false ISPs. Most unpleasant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

Thus, as much as I'd prefer that we were completely open about our lives and locations in the same way we would do if this were an in-person community club, I believe there are potential problems with such an approach on the internet. Not posting one's real name and specific location or personal e-mail is how I keep some semblance of peace in my own internet life. Yet many other people choose the open strategy and seem to do fine. YMMV, as with the rest of life.

On a positive note, I believe this forum is so competently and pleasantly monitored, and (as necessary) explicitly moderated, the likelihood of forum harassment is immensely reduced. Also, there is a strong core of respected members who have a well-established forum presence, and this also seems to help the forum's stability and quality.

Again, I very much hope these comments are constructive and appropriate.
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[Harold Gough]

There is a difference between giving a full postal address and stating your country!

Harold
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Committed to the use of fine grain colour reversal film and manual focus lenses.

[DaveW]

I agree with Harold, logic would dictate there would be no problems with such disclosure.

Even if you took my location given under my avatar and using DaveW there would be dozens of DaveW's in Nottingham, plus I don't live in the town of Nottingham anyway but one of it's dormitory suburbs which is also in a different administrative district, so if you searched Nottinghamshire for me there would be hundreds of DaveW's

As most people on Forums don't list their names or even their pictures, rough location data would be absolutely no use in tracing them, but is of great use in supplying information which often has to be country or area specific in reply to questions.

DQE says:-

"over the years I've experienced or witnessed several stressful situations due to members having revealed personal residence address information, real names, e-mails, etc."

Obviously disclosure of addresses and e-mails has nothing to do with simple vague location data under an avatar, but a person unwisely giving out personal data in a PM originally. Something entirely different to what Harold was proposing and what is seemingly being misinterpreted by others.

With tags like DQE it would be virtually impossible to identify the person from vague locality data.

DaveW

[rjlittlefield]

Personally, I like to know roughly speaking where people live, and obviously I don't mind having my own information known.

But the important words there are "personally" and "like". Other people have different preferences, experiences, and concerns.

There is no compelling reason to require disclosure of location from all members, and there are compelling reasons to not require it.

Therefore, by consensus of the admin group:

[Danny]

I don't know exactly what this thread is doing in here. Maybe general discussions is the place for it.

Location will never be compulsory, same as religion, colour of skin, male or female, etc, etc. Heck, its a forum for photomacrography and photomicrography. Not anything else. Its about the images.

Think about how small some of our countries might be and how easy it would be to find someone with an online phone book. I don't care about the UK or USA, etc. Try a country with only 4 million in it and we give a city location and a not so common name. Ain't going to happen !!.

Danny.
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Worry about the image that comes out of the box, rather than the box itself.