Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Addition to my "philosophy"/about free e-mail accounts

Author: Dan Homan

Date: 06:36:22 06/07/99

Go up one level in this thread


On June 07, 1999 at 00:24:45, Harald Faber wrote:

>I will make big efforts to no longer allow anonymous e-mail accounts here for a
>new period. Also for existing accounts via hotmail etc.
>
>Only exception: if someone with this account wants to stay, he has to prove his
>identity.

I think this is a mistake.  I know many nice people who have free e-mail
accounts from places like Yahoo.  They do it for convience, so that
they can check their mail from the web, rather than from a server.
For people who travel a lot, this is a particularly nice convience.
Would discriminating against such accounts really make the moderator's
jobs any easier?

And what do you consider an anonymous e-mail account?  It seems to me
that olmost any e-mail account can be anonymous.  People get AOL,
compuserve, At&t, etc CD-ROMS in the mail everyday....  Do you really
think an account through any of these services is not anonymous if
someone wants them to be?

Personally I would prefer if people use their real names and take
responibility for what they post, but I don't think we should
require this because there is no good way to enforce it.   The only kind
of enforcement I can imagine here is requiring people to mail in
copies of an "official" identificiation of some sort.  This would not
only be a pain in the butt for everyone involved (especially ICD who would
need to verify the validitiy of each identification, otherwise what is the
point?), but it would need to be required of everyone (current members
included) or it would be seen by some as a form of harassment of
members who the moderators don't like.

 - Dan

P.S.  One possibility that might work would be a one-time $5 registration
fee to be paid by personal check or online via credit card.  Something
this simple would discourage people from joining who just wanted to
cause trouble.  Of course, it means more work for ICD....  I am not sure
it is worth it.

P.P.S.  I do want to note that at least two prolific, polite, and
interesting posters have (now and in the past) been "anonymous".




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.