I've been lurking in this forum boards for a while now and in that span of time, I have noticed some things that can be done for the site. Please take them into consideration although I am not expecting that all of these will be accepted.
In the terms of agreement:
You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum.
If this part of the terms of agreement is enforced with solid authority, then the forums must undergo some modifications. First, on the sexually oriented and adult material part. The Friendsterforums has a section with two boards in it, the lady's room and the men's room. Both boards have sexually-charged conversations. Upon observation, that part of the forums is garnering a large following so deleting it is surely not an option. However, I'll take a wild guess and state that we have minors here (even I am considered a minor). So what can be done? I propose that those two parts of the forums be transformed into private forums accesible only by a unique usergroup. Once the forum has been turned private, then only those who are part of the unique usergroup can access it. So, members who wish to take part in the discussions there must first apply to join the usergroup before they can access the lady's room and men's room. In this case, it will be an "apply at your own risk" policy. True, this will not perfectly hinder the minors from accessing that part of the forums at will (unless the moderators and admins are 100% aware that that certain member is a minor) BUT this can at least save friendsterforums from any liability of serving sexually oriented discussions to minors.
As for the advertisements and pyramid scheme part. Well, the advertisements like advertising new forums is okay but I think the terms of agreement prohibits advertisement of products. And pyramid schemes and the like are a big NO. And I sure can see some topics that I can consider scams.
One more suggestion is about the regional boards. I think it will be nice to keep those parts private. I mean, the Philippines regional board should be accessed solely by filipinos and the Indonesia regional boards must be accesed solely by indonesians (this can be done by making separate usergroups for each). This way, the members of the same citizenship can have a sense of privacy within the forum boards. Then the admins can make some friendly competitions which will pit the regional usergroups with each other in the name of good fun.
That will be all for now. (",)
