A Question from a new person

[clipper#5]

Since this is my first post on this board I have a quick question for the moderator. I browsed the boards before making my first post to get a feel for the place. From what I saw, I liked. Good conversation, nice design, but I did see one thing that bothered me. I browsed through some of the old posts and came across something I've never seen on a message board before. I found some posts from people who are now unregistered. I don't need an explaination for them being unregistered, but why where they labeled as "sh!theads?" I find it interesting that they would be labeled as such for being unregisterd. Even if they broke some rule and were unregistered for that reason I don't see why the label is necessary. When I signed up I had to answer whether or not I was 13 or older. If kids post on this board, do you think its something they should see? I would assume vulgarity along with name calling would be kept off the board. Wouldn't that be breaking the netiquette I agreed to when registering? Sorry for taking up your time, but that was something I found rather interesting.

[penguin4]

The people who are "unregistered" are sh!theads... this forum has had everything from online stalkers to rabble-rousing Red Sox fans. I won't go into detail, because I know Jim doesn't like to discuss these things, or Yankees.com griping on this forum, but I'm sure that if you e-mailed him he could give you the full history...

[Jim F.]

First things first, welcome to the forum :).

Despite that agreement upon registration, we don't have many kids who don't already know what those types of words mean. The age verification is a law passed by our government called the "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act". As the owner of this site, the age of the visitors is irrelevant to me, but legally I have to make sure kids have their parents permission before I can collect any information from them, such as the email address that is required upon registration.

Now, this forum is very unique, in that the users respect each other, I respect them, and they respect my wishes for how I'd like this site to be run. Based on that, I have to do very little "moderating" - since the majority of users are adults. Regardless of age, the people that I have unregistered from this forum were unregistered because they *were* ................heads. It takes a lot for me to do that to someone - so if they received that label, chances are they deserved it. There have been one or two people that were simply banned, without that label.

I hope this answers your question :).

-jim

[clipper#5]

Hmmm, intersting....thanks.