It made enough of a difference to mine to want to give back and start the forum in the first place, such is the power of these things!
Little stories come up now and then through the questions people ask and it's possible to see how they're using the tool. It's like forums just bring life to the surface even if you fight to stop it, it's a genuinely compelling form of social interaction.
Aside from the spam.
The thanks that comes along is infrequent but very nice to receive.
But the permanence of those posts can bite you in the ass. Over time your post history will grow and if it's accessible to others (and they care enough to dig through it) they can potentially use what you said 6 months, a year, ten years ago against you. If you happen to let slip your real identity, all of that history is now linked to the "real life you" and if you said anything under the false expectation of anonymity you're screwed.
This is one of the reasons I don't think I could ever go into politics. A savvy opponent would only need to do a few google searches, research my online history, find some stupid shit I said when I was 17 years old on LiveJournal or whatever, and there goes my campaign.
> You can be yourself in many different ways, one "persona" per topical forum. No one would know who you are or care about your sex, race or political orientation.
Use pseudonyms! Be cautious about what you post online. There are so few sites that require your real identity that letting it 'slip' should not even be a possibility.
There is no 'my online history', but 'nick1 online history', 'nick2 online history' etc.
It's not like I'm doing that today at 30 years old. But when you're 15, the internet is relatively new in the mainstream, and these people are your "friends", maybe you give them your phone number so you can chat, or your address so they can send you something, and then someone else gets ahold of it, and there you go.
Kids don't exactly think rationally and are notoriously bad at foreseeing the eventual impact their current actions have.
I will say that I've been going to greater effort the last few years to use completely different names on every site I post on, and not post anything that could be traced back to my real identity in most places. Not so much here though.
This isn't something previous generations have had to experience in politics or in the workforce and it'll only get more ugly with time. The kids today who are in their teens are churning out exponentially more troubling data than I ever did. Just imagine what kind of political mudslinging fodder that will provide in 20 years.
Reminds me of this NDP politician in Calgary that had some photo of her surface in which she was holding a joint and giving the flag the finger. It's completely irrelevant (and could have been a joke for all we know), but I'm sure the fact that it surfaced stung her like a thousand bees.
I believe at some point in time we will have stop caring about these sorts of things because eventually everyone will be affected to some degree, but that time is not now.
Luckily, the one time I ran for public office, nobody was arsed to go looking. Or I got lucky and they didn't find that stuff and realize it was me.
To me forums are still the best thing about the internet. Forums with simple threads, post count based user titles, avatars, nicknames and strict topics. You can be yourself in many different ways, one "persona" per topical forum. No one would know who you are or care about your sex, race or political orientation. anc84 is me here for example, nothing matters but the content of my posts.