Suggestion for Edaboard registration change

Just an idea, I'm not familiar with vBulletin so I'm not sure if it can be done:

Make entry of new members country mandatory, preferably with a selection of countries rather than a field to fill in themselves.

I don't think anyone would see it as a security risk but it would help when messages like "what can I buy in the local market" come up when we have no idea where abouts the poster is from. It would also help by giving some idea of the time zone the poster is in, what their local regulations are and what their local electricty supply is.

I appreciate it wouldn't be a foolproof system and would rely entirely on the honesty of the member. Possibly some of the country information is already present in the Edaboard database after the enforced re-registration a few weeks back.

Brian.

Members should be encouraged to reveal their home country, but you can't make this mandatory I think. A wish for anonymity should be respected.

betwixt said:

...I don't think anyone would see it as a security risk but it would help when messages like "what can I buy in the local market" come up when we have no idea where abouts the poster is from...

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Perhaps this could be unenforceable, due all members who were registered up to now was agreed to following rules, which ensures confidentiality.

Privacy Policy
This privacy policy sets out how WTWH Media, LLC uses and protects any information that you give EDABOARD when you use this website. EDABOARD is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement. EDABOARD may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

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Source: https://www.edaboard.com/misc.php?do=vsarules



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betwixt said:

...it would help when messages like "what can I buy in the local market" come up when we have no idea where abouts the poster is from.

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I'm not sure about that. Even if you know what country they live in, you won't know what's available in the local shops unless you're familiar with whichever city/town/village they live in.

As an aside I tend to assume that anyone using the phrase "in local market" lives either in India or Pakistan. AFAIK, the words "market" and "marketing" have a somewhat different meaning in Indian/Pakistani English than they do in standard English, being closer in meaning to "shop" and "shopping" respectively.

I have to admit that my mental response to that kind of question tends to be along the lines of: "If you don't know what's available in your local electronics store, how the #### am I supposed to know - I live on the opposite side of the planet."

Knowing the country would occasionally help with the other things mentioned though e.g. local electricity.

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What I would love to see on the forum is enhanced auto-censorship. At the moment any post containing less than 10 characters is automatically rejected. How about also automatically rejecting any posts containing any of the following:
- All capitals
- No capitals
- More exclamation marks than periods/full stops
- More than three consecutive question marks or exclamation marks

That shouldn't discriminate unfairly against people who's home language isn't English, but it would encourage people to at least attempt to communicate clearly.

godfreyl said:

...Even if you know what country they live in, you won't know what's available in the local shops unless you're familiar with whichever city/town/village they live in...

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In fact, even if sharing information about the region where you live in, could not be effective to answer the proposed reason at first post.

godfreyl said:

...What I would love to see on the forum is enhanced auto-censorship. At the moment any post containing less than 10 characters is automatically rejected. How about also automatically rejecting any posts containing any of the following:
- All capitals
- No capitals
- More exclamation marks than periods/full stops
- More than three consecutive question marks or exclamation marks

That shouldn't discriminate unfairly against people who's home language isn't English, but it would encourage people to at least attempt to communicate clearly.

Click to expand...

Maybe could be achieved by some orthographic corrector tool, able to account amount of errors, proportional to posted message.



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