Posted by fi on January 9, 2002, at 6:30:40
In reply to Re: posting email addresses, profiles, and delays, posted by Dr. Bob on January 8, 2002, at 11:54:40
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response.
I've put bits in below, but thinking over it now I think it boils down to:
1. Anyone wanting to post their email publically can already do so without the click box option, within a message on the Board.
2. From a few week's reading of some messages (so may have missed things), its very rare for anyone to post their email address. Stigma plus a general reluctance to publicise your identity on the open internet are more important. Sometimes people do offer to someone who seems particularly desperate, which worries me about this alturistic act exposing them to every malicious nerd surfer out there...
3. It would be useful to have some way of sending your email address to another Board member that was private ie not up any website.
> > Wouldnt it be better *not* to have the option of 'post your email address' on the form? Particularly so close to an option we may use- 'notify you ...'? Its not worth the risk of someone hitting the wrong check box by mistake.
>
> Hmm, the idea was to make it easier for people who wanted to be emailed, but I hadn't thought about clicking it by mistake...
>
> 1. Would a layout like this be better?It would be, but still better not to have it at all, given we can put it in the text. I havent been paying proper attention, but is anyone actually clicking to display their email anyway? If not, this indicates there isnt a need, really.(By the way, you might want to delete/change the page with 'this' as its got you user name and password entered!)
>
> 2. I was thinking about redoing this anyway. What if posting your email address wasn't something you decided each time you posted, but there was one setting that applied to all your posts?
>
> It could be connected to your registration information, so you could update it there whenever you liked.
>
> And I think it could be set up to work retroactively. So if you were posting your email address, but then changed your mind, you could change the setting, and it wouldn't show up in your future posts or even in your *previous* posts.Much better than first option, tho still a risk someone might happily opt to post it and then forget they had done so some time down the road.
>
> 3. Another possibility would be letting people create profiles for themselves. They could be like those at Yahoo -- or they could actually *be* those at Yahoo (and PB could just link to them). For example, my profile there is at:
>
> http://profiles.yahoo.com/drbobuchicago
>
> As you can see, it's possible to keep your email address from being displayed. That's a very basic example, you could do a lot more there. Maybe others have and would like to share theirs as examples?
This has exactly the same problem as posting your email in a message, tho- any of the millions of internet users could access it,and connect with postings so all anonymity was lost. The problem is trying to work out some way that individual board members could let other individual board members know their email.>
> The long-term goal would be to have email addresses not included in posts at all (unless they're typed in), but just on the person's profile page (if they want). That way, it's also just one setting and easy to change. (Although a general caveat regarding changing pages is that previous versions might have been saved elsewhere.)
>
Thanks again for all your work (even if the current picture is *bizarre*!)Fi
poster:fi
thread:2562
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20011216/msgs/2587.html