Subject:
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Change in handling of real names on LUGNET web pages?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.suggestions
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Date:
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Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:52:07 GMT
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Hi all,
recently we receive quite a number of requests from individual users to have
their real names and/or profile pages removed from search engine result pages.
We realize that some of you probably would rather not see their names on such
pages for various reasons that we in turn would not want to discuss here.
Our general approach is that LUGNET is a public platform, so availability of
information should only be limited in places where this is absolutely necessary.
I think most of you are aware that whatever you post here in terms of both
language and content may eventually be searched for and found on the web. This
is part of why LUGNET has become so popular - we do find a lot of people come
here through search engine results, and of course it is vital for LUGNET to keep
it that way.
My suggestion therefore would be - as is common practice with some of the more
recent communities out there - to implement some sort of "self-service",
allowing every _registered_ (!) user to set a flag in their profile, deciding
whether or not their profile, real name and other personal information should be
accessible to the public. Note that whatever implementation approach we may
take, availability of such profile and name information must at any time remain
accessible to registered users, since otherwise the whole community approach
would be put to question. However, since search engines work as everything _but_
a registered user, users deciding on keeping their profile private will
eventually not find their real names or profile contents in search engines any
more. This also applies to posts in the LUGNET newsgroups, where the web display
for unregistered visitors would show some generic text instead of the real name
and email address.
The benefit in turn could be that for logged-in users, we would not have to
spam-cloak email addresses anymore since search engines (and eventually addresse
harvesters) wouldn't be able to see them but registered users could more easily
try to email other users if necessary.
I am very curious as to what you think about these suggestions/proposals. We
would want to find a solution that both helps those of you looking for more
privacy and still keep the community as such functional.
Please note that whatever steps we will take, these will only be applicable to
_registered_ users (as other users may have posting permissions but do not have
a profile to change their settings in to begin with). To put it that way, if you
post as an unregistered user, we won't be able to do much about your privacy.
Also - apart from emergencies or offense - we will not meddle with the contents
of posts, so before hitting the "Post" button, it may be useful to have some
brains kick in... I think you know what I mean ;)
Thanks for your comments,
Jerry
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