Creating an “elite members club” or whatever you want to name it.

Um Wes, I do not think I can deny access to or grant it on my forum.
I did not know that was possible.

What exactly would the point be?

There already is such a thing in place, after all, it is called being a paid member.

I think a seperate forum for only paid members is a bad idea.

I feel that requiring full names on BOI posts is sufficient. The rest of the forums here are merely discussion forums. No reason to require full names in a discussion about blue tongue skinks or rainbow boas, is there?

Kelli,

It's not requesting full names, it's requesting real identities that I'm after.

Rich, if the headache and work of doing so is too much for you right now, why not outsourcing it? There might be someone willing to do that job. Let him/her have the proceeds, maybe it doesn't amount much to you but $1 times 5,000 people it's a nice Christmas bonus!

Regards.

Originally Posted by Stardust

Um Wes, I do not think I can deny access to or grant it on my forum.
I did not know that was possible.

Interesting. For some reason I can't get into lucille's when I'm signed in so there must be some way to keep people out.

Unless you're implying that she has recieved some sort of preferential treatment which we ALL know is well nigh impossible here at Fauna.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

Mike, Rich has made it abundantly clear that many things would never occur here.

Some of these things have then occured.

Yes, they have Wes. Are you suggesting that I do not have that flexibility in the way I run this site? When evidence and opinions indicate that a change in my attitude and policy is perhaps needed I should just ignore such things?

Originally Posted by Wilomn

Unless you're implying that she has recieved some sort of preferential treatment which we ALL know is well nigh impossible here at Fauna.

Oh it certainly will happen when I desire it to be so. Such things as unbanning someone PERMANENTLY BANNED would likely fall within that category, wouldn't you say, Wes? And I have done favors for other people, or done things that may have been beneficial to them in one way or another when I felt like doing so. I think I am allowed such administrative perks, eh?

Originally Posted by The BoidSmith

Rich, if the headache and work of doing so is too much for you right now, why not outsourcing it? There might be someone willing to do that job. Let him/her have the proceeds, maybe it doesn't amount much to you but $1 times 5,000 people it's a nice Christmas bonus!

Regards.

I believe you are WAY overestimating how many people would sign up for such a thing. If more than 100 people signed up for it, I would be shocked. And once the person assigned to do this gets tired of it, or fed up for one reason or another, or perhaps just gets tired of the unavoidable headaches that will arise, and tells me they are moving on, that the $67 they earned just isn't worth it, dumping it in my lap, then what?

I will use Wes as an example, as he fits the best. BTW, for being someone who I believe was first on Wes' "Ignore" list, it is with great satisfaction that I see he cannot post in a thread, regardless of my non-participation there, without mentioning my name. Seems I own you W .......

Dan, I'm assuming that your goal would be more self-accountability. Nice in theory. While it may rid a thread of some petty sniping, we have enough such nonsense from regular members anyway. If someone is a known entity, but has little if any reputation at risk to begin with, what have they to lose by making an ass of themselves here ? Put another way, you can't lose what you never had. Overwhelmingly large numbers of people in the herp community will not participate here because it is as the WWW Mike described, and real members made it that way. Look at the posts here so far in this thread. Your thread starter, and many of the following posts, were serious. To no one's surprise, who decided to bring in the manure ? Happy Birthday Wes ! Maybe myself or Lucille, etc, could call him some names back, etc. Whoopee. What fun.

The primary business of the site might be in the number of hits. Stupidity generates more hits than intelligence, just as more folks will watch Jerry Springer than NOVA. That's an unfortunate reality for some of us. What a few of us are losing the stomach for is more of the worsening nonsense. Should the site continue more in the direction of the WWW, and to be more frank about it, the gutter, while it may produce record numbers of hits and trash posts, we can both imagine who amongst us will be here rolling in the mud and loving life, and who will have moved on. That's life.

Hmm, odd.
Personally if someone did not want me to go into their space odds are I wouldn't want to go there either.
Myspace does have the option of making it private, but when I read the discription here it didn't say that so I accepted it.
Also, I don't mind if people come in and out of there and I rather like the idea of an absentee landlord, I can fix my own damn faucets, lol.

Oh, and for the record, I actually did have a forum on this site that was accessible ONLY by paid members. It went largely unused and ignored, so I just removed it.

So no, I can't see anything new being brought to the table here.

Actually I do recall that now that you mention it. Also Hell is a paid membership although not for what is being asked here. I don't know how it is doing but it is still there.
The site is fine on its own, too much changing and worrying can drive the best of us crazy, or trying to make everyone happy.
Still am not into trolls but hey, it happens.

Trolls and spam are something that will always be on the net. All you can do is to try to deal with it after the fact. Case and point are the numerous spam blockers that many ISPs have taken up. Certainly in a lot of cases, that brand of cure has become worse than the original disease.

Spam can be deleted. Trolls, once identified, simply can be ignored.