Log In for Chat
Effective immediately, you now are required to log into the site in order to participate in the Sound Off chat. We’ll see how it goes this week before deciding whether to make this change permanent.
I do not want to alienate or lose any participants, but I do want to encourage you to log in. We kept the Sound Off open as a convenience for people so they would not have to log in, but we still expected participants to identify themselves in some meaningful way. Identification is important in order to provide the continuity necessary to facilitate communication. Really there has never been a legitimate excuse for refusing to provide a consistent identifier since these names allowed you to remain fully anonymous if you so wished.
Too many people not only declined to log in but also declined to replace their system generated name with something more recognizable. I invited people to explain themselves but nobody provided a legitimate reason for failing to type in a unique name, and those users continued to ignore my requests for compliance with this simple and unobtrusive request.
I have found the contributions from these “generic” users to be interesting and relevant, so I implore them to continue to participate by creating a login account. You can be assured that your real identity will remain fully secure, so there is no reason to not do it.
Anyone having trouble creating an account or logging in is welcome to email me at steelballs@thenetmail.com.
Quite pleased with this development. I like knowing who I’m talking to.
May I make 1 suggestion, you may want to include an instruction to hit ENTER in lieu of a submit button. We’ve had people ask for clarification on that in several instances and I’m sure others just gave up.
On the down side Ben, now you will have fewer posts to disagree with. Right Earl?
Personally I think it will diminish the board a little. Like I posted, I hated their lazy ass approach to signing in and even tho I seldom responded to their posts because of the anonymity factor I did read them and some were quite good. But on the other hand, a requirement to register is common for about all sites these days. If they don’t appreciate the opportunity to post on a free and basically uncensored board simply because we ask them to somewhat identify themselves (and not even personally) … fuck ’em.
I am not and never have been concerned about people who are just too damned inconsiderate to type in a screen name despite repeated requests – any random name, mind you, with no need to divulge who or where you are or create an account with a password, or provide a credit card or pay a fee. There is just no excuse for being unwilling to do that.
The one person who gave a reason basically said he was afraid of being attacked. Well, this excuse makes no sense. You can be attacked no matter what name you use, nobody knows who you are unless you divulge personal details, and if you want you could instantly change your screen name to something else if you wanted a clean start.
So because of a few abusers the rest of us have lost a convenience.
My only concern is for ease of access for everyone else. Many regulars did not always log in, including Walsh, malsor, TB, etc. It was a nice convenience to not have to log in under certain legitimate circumstances. If we lose participation because of that then this change will have been a mistake, and if so I’ll reverse it and we’ll live with the abusers.
We’ll see how things shake out this week.
Good point. makes sense. Although malsor has already remembered how to login. the guys we’ll miss will be TB, saneman, Walsh, and a few others that definitely brought value.
Tired of being attacked? Really? I’m tired of you being such a pussy that you can’t stand behind what you’ve said. Besides, plenty of people have taken less than popular points of view and GAINED respect for having done so. Stand your ground, challenge your cyber world reader, just do your homework and state your case intelligently.
ASSCAR!