June speaks the truth!
We did lock down our membership registration for the time being (and probably permanently) because we had a couple of banned members who think they are clever by pretending to be other people, creating fake personas so they can further victimize people on this site, etc.
And I'm not having it.
I will not, however, build a giant wall around this website so that it is so cumbersome for new people to join that it's a turnoff just because a few fucked-up individuals have nothing better to do with their lives than troll and create drama. I think it's important to maintain a welcome space with room for us to "check ID's at the door" in the way of verifying IP addresses, locations, and whether or not someone is trying to use a proxy service.
We owe that to ourselves and to this space and even though it takes us a little extra time to check each person, it's worth it.
I will expound on what June talked about with information about people who are abusive/scammers/con artists, etc.
YES, we want to know. NO, we can't always do something about it.
If you have personal experience with someone being physically abusive, stealing money, using drugs, killing kitties, selling their children, etc., we would appreciate it if you would let us know about it either by pm'ing myself or any of the Moderators or dropping me an email.
We may not always be able to *do* something about that person but, as June said, it helps us see a bigger picture, especially if multiple people come to us and say, "So and So said they were going to set my house on fire."
We have a private forum for the Moderators where we discuss every issue on ths site. We share information about themes in the forums, people who are having a hard time, or people who have made threats so that we are all in the loop about what is going on. Sometimes we might say to one another, "Hey, so and so's Father just passed away so they might be feeling sad" or "Jim and Bob just broke up so we might need to watch their posts in case they dig at one another."
This is often how we catch things before they are even reported; because we are all very connected to these forums and the people in them.
I also want to stress that as much as we listen to people telling us that someone is abusive, a crook, etc., we also pay attention to the people who are making accusations.
If "Bertha Mae" says that someone was abusive to them every single time she gets out of a relationship, we are going to notice that.
If "Elvis Aaron" says he has a terminal illness and has 3 months to live but is still around 6 years later, we are going to notice that.
If "June" suddenly starts posting photos of naked women and calling people "cuntbuckets", we are going to think she has either lost her damn mind or that someone has broken into her account.
None of these examples are absolute, we recognize that every situation has it's details and are willing to examine them all differently.
My personal commitment to this site is that I will do what I can for as long as I can to help maintain a sane space. I feel that all of our Moderators and volunteers feel exactly the same way.
There will be people who will try our patience, test us, make threats, etc. To that I say that I have never been one to kowtow to a bully, a sycophant, or a fucked up sociopath.
The best way to get my negative attention is to fuck with this space and the people in it, whether by using this site as a toy for your fucked up issues or playing chess with the hearts and minds of the people who come here for positive reasons.
I don't care how you play out your fucked up drama, just don't do it here.
Sorry for my little tangent here but want to make it super clear to folks, this space will exist for a very long time and the truth is that it will exist with or without every single one of us.
Our choice is to be a productive member of this community or to play tiddlywinks with ourselves in crazyland without the benefit of the wonderful people who come here.