[Kevin Sevcik]

Luke, I don't think a forum on CD where people can post whatever bile they want to spew would really futher the forum's purpose as a place for teams to spread FIRST's message, help other teams, etc. There isn't anything positive that could come out of a forum like that, save for the person spewing the bile. We'd be better off suggesting to them that they type up their rants in notepad, print them out, and rip them to tiny shreds to work out their obvious anger.

At any rate, I don't know that there are many good technical solutions to anonymous posting. Forcing someone to identify with a team will just make people pick teams at random. And it's not like you can make people send Brandon a photo id so they can get an account. Worse, any sort of lengthy verification process we make people go through will just make it tougher on people coming here cause they need help quickly. Banning and blocking will just force the posters to start multiple new accounts, though it might give them a time out to think about what they've said. About the best solution I can think of would be something akin to AOL's warning system where one user can warn another and restrict the rate they can post at. This has problems as well, but any purely techincal solution is going to have lots of problems.

I think we just have to deal with the fact that anonymity happens on the internet, and trolls are a fact of life. And make it abundantly clear to said trolls that they really aren't FIRST or CD material if they can think such things about their fellow teams.