Inge pointed me to this thread. There is so much to talk about here, but here are just a few thoughts.
YLF is open to the Internet so there will be all kinds of people signing up, not all with good intentions. But if it wasn't open to the Internet then none of the wonderful members would be here either. It's a double edged sword.
There is a wide continuum. Sometimes there are obvious trolls and spammers, but there are also situations that are much less clear. Over time Angie and I have become slower to sit in judgment of members that we find strange because there have been cases where something that looked off initially turned out to be a wonderful member. Often people new to forums just haven't learned the norms and need time to adjust.
We are extremely happy that so many people take the high road and respond to questionable threads with polite and helpful responses. That is awesome because it treats people as "innocent until proven guilty". And if they are insincere in some way, that's on their conscience. No skin off our nose that we responded in good faith.
We're not very comfortable with people discussing members being fake or other moderation related issues in threads. We would prefer those to be reported and/or blocked/ignored.
We are very tolerant of people posting to promote their own private blog when it isn't overtly commercial. Everybody has to get their start somewhere, so as long as they are on topic, and not subverting threads or being unpleasant in some way, we welcome people linking to their own blogs.
Angie and I are sometimes uncomfortable with the level of personal information people post in off topic. We created that category because (1) we wanted to keep the main forum on topic, and (2) we didn't want those threads to be searchable or easily discoverable to non-members (because of their sometimes personal nature). But I don't think it is a good idea to reveal personal information there or to post information that could cause problems if discovered by other people. We have seen one situation (years ago) where a member posted some unpleasant things about a neighbor who subsequently discovered the posts.
The "report post" option sends us a message and we investigate. If something is seriously off, please also send me or Angie a private message. "Remove spam" removes the post in addition to reporting it. Please only use this for actual spam (i.e. people using YLF to promote something commercially) or something that you feel urgently needs to be removed (e.g. something very offensive). If there is something that you find odd or unpleasant, rather use the block feature (and report it).
The thing I am most concerned about is abuse of private messaging. Please report any suspicious messages to us immediately and never reveal personal information to people unless you are 100% certain they are who they say they are.
