Hazards of On-Line Communities
Like most things, on-line communities are not without their hazards. In this
section, we will look at the hazards and what actions can be taken to circumvent
or minimize their impact on your community.
Spammers: Spamming is the practice of sending unsolicited e-mail in
mass and is considered very poor manners on the web. Spammers of course want to
get valid e-mail addresses that are relevant the product or service they are trying
to hype. Often they will buy mailing lists or create their own by harvesting real
e-mail addresses from news or discussion groups. Spammers will also try to post
advertisements on your discussion groups.
Inappropriate Behavior: There are many ways people can behave inappropriately.
The most common is for one participant in a discussion group to hurl vindictive
insults at others in the group. Another is to pose as a participant, only to latter
solicit their products or services to members of the group.
Here are a few guidelines for dealing with these problems:
Your discussion groups or chat rooms need to be private. To participate, people
must create a username and password. One way to authenticate users is to require
a valid e-mail address. You send them an initial password by e-mail that they
are then free to change to whatever they want after they log on for the first
time. If you do this, make sure to have a clearly written privacy policy that
assures participants that the e-mail address is used for authentication only.
Have a clearly stated code of conduct. Participants should agree to a simple
code of conduct that states what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Retain the right to ban participants that break this code of conduct. Note that
there is a big difference between destructive behavior and negative comments.
We are advocating civility not content censorship. A good virtual community is
a free flowing discourse where all members respect each other.
|
