Author: Eelco de Groot
Date: 19:12:43 04/13/01
While I can't agree with most of what Paul Doire had to say in the "courtesy threads" there is one thing with which I do agree and that is that we dinosaurs here sometimes tend to be a little wary of new names. I am guilty of this myself and I apologize to all real new members. There has been misuse by people who thought it would be loads of fun to sign up with lots of different names and then hold animated dicussions with oneself. Very nice as long as everybody knows what is going on but there actually are members here who come just to read about computer chess programming and do not read 100% of all posts. How can they know who is real? I sure can't! This is another consequence of the idea that it might be a good thing to be able to stay completely anonymous on the Net. To fight against "Big Brother" and the misuse of publically available information, yes, but it also opens up other avenues for misuse. I expect any moment Queen Mary or Robert Bruce to show up and how do we tell them from the real McCoy? So I can think of three things right now which might help a little but two of which might be much work for Tim Mirabile to program it. I believe CCC has its own software to run this board so we can't just download ready-made software. But I was thinking of: 1. Displaying IP-numbers in every message. It is inplemented in Rebel Board now and so far I think it is working well. There is some variability in the numbers but most seem to be pretty static. If I understood what Robert Hyatt said about owners of cable modems, then most have one IP-address. With ADSL-plus from HCC-Net for instance you get four IP-addresses but that is more expensive and those I would expect to be clustered closely together. If people post through a free e-mail account they would show up as an IP from such a service. But there would still be the advantage that accounts with a reasonably static IP can be recognized by that. 2. On the Computer Schach und Spiele forum I saw there is the possibility to display a picture (.JPG) in your message. I liked very much seeing a picture of Beta, Christophe's cat ( http://www.f23.parsimony.net/forum50826/messages/16245.htm ) and other Tigers like it! Such things are also a wonderful way of getting to know people a little better and it doesn't have to be just pictures of the posters themselves. 3. Asking people wanting to sign up not to be afraid to post a little bit off topic now and then. For the same reasons and I think it is VERY MUCH necessary! Just as an example I would like to ask all newcomers to take an example of Fernando Villegas style of posting and write a little bit about themselves apart from just computer-chess. Of course nobody can write exactly the way Fernando does, for example, maybe that would be just a little too much of a good thing! At least this gives us a chance to know who is who or at least who owns what canary or maybe a beautiful Fidelity Elite Sensory Board! Eelco
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