In the BWRA AGM the chairman made a comment about the moderating of k9, he thanked us for being on the ball but also raised a few issues. Some members have taken this as they could have their BWRA membership withdrawn so i would like to address a few things and probably Tony will add his bit.
The forum moderators have no control over who registers and anyone with an email address can do so, the moderators can check IP addresses to a certain extent to see once a member has posted if they are already using another name and what area they are posting from, this has lead to the "outing" of a number of "alias's" and members posting under 2 or more names. We've had cases where people have purposely used an IP masking tool (impersonating another computer in a different area/country) so that we couldn't trace them for a while.
We could just make every post from new members invisible until we find out who they are but this would make moderating very difficult, the other draw back of that is people could just register a racers name for their username. Say "Linda Broom" joined then we would all just presume this was Linda (sorry Linda just using you as an example) and it would be very difficult to stop people registering in this way.
Another point which was made by a non member of k9 was that some information that was posted was (allegedly) false, people had a lot to say on this particular thread - obviously the forum moderators let this go as we had no complaints and at the time saw no forum rules being broke, all i can say is we don't have a crystal ball, if we don't know you have an issue with something we won't be doing anything about it, if you aren't a k9 member but want us to look at something the only thing i can suggest is that you either phone one of us, see us at the track or join to private message us, please don't just let a thread run it's course if you are unhappy about it, and if you consider a post to be slanderous to yourself then you really need to make us aware of it.
Lastly there is a reason this site is still the most visited non ped site, and that's because it is giving racers information which wasn't readily available before the world of k9 began, nothing can be secret anymore, ok there are some posts we don't like on here, but they will get said whether it's on here or at the track (and 9/10 probably behind your back) so to those who are anti k9, like it or lump it, we are in the 21st century and it is time to move forward.
The forum moderators have no control over who registers and anyone with an email address can do so, the moderators can check IP addresses to a certain extent to see once a member has posted if they are already using another name and what area they are posting from, this has lead to the "outing" of a number of "alias's" and members posting under 2 or more names. We've had cases where people have purposely used an IP masking tool (impersonating another computer in a different area/country) so that we couldn't trace them for a while.
We could just make every post from new members invisible until we find out who they are but this would make moderating very difficult, the other draw back of that is people could just register a racers name for their username. Say "Linda Broom" joined then we would all just presume this was Linda (sorry Linda just using you as an example) and it would be very difficult to stop people registering in this way.
Another point which was made by a non member of k9 was that some information that was posted was (allegedly) false, people had a lot to say on this particular thread - obviously the forum moderators let this go as we had no complaints and at the time saw no forum rules being broke, all i can say is we don't have a crystal ball, if we don't know you have an issue with something we won't be doing anything about it, if you aren't a k9 member but want us to look at something the only thing i can suggest is that you either phone one of us, see us at the track or join to private message us, please don't just let a thread run it's course if you are unhappy about it, and if you consider a post to be slanderous to yourself then you really need to make us aware of it.
Lastly there is a reason this site is still the most visited non ped site, and that's because it is giving racers information which wasn't readily available before the world of k9 began, nothing can be secret anymore, ok there are some posts we don't like on here, but they will get said whether it's on here or at the track (and 9/10 probably behind your back) so to those who are anti k9, like it or lump it, we are in the 21st century and it is time to move forward.
Perhaps the most effective way of silencing people who post under a false name (and whose comments are inflammatory) is to ignore their posts and cut them out of the discussion by not replying to their comments. Easy to say and hard to do I know, but the internet is here to stay, however you choose to use it.
