I know this will be controversial and the subject has come up before but I've been thinking about it and here's my thoughts...

There are laws that protect us when out and about from obsenities. If someone came up to you on the street and said something offensive to you, it may be difficult to prove but the laws are there. So why is it that it seems to be accepted on dating sites? Is this fair? Personally I don't think so.

I'm not a prude and I accept that when we set ourselves up here we're exposing ourselves to the www as it were and all the people who use it, but still shouldn't we make an effort to ensure that it is as decent a place as we can?

So a simple suggestion to try trim out the worst offenders. A Name and Shame thread. If you get an obsene message or have a persistent pest, which is not quite bad enough for a ban but is still going too far, send the message to a name and shame thread. It gets viewed first by a moderator to screen out petty gripes etc, and when its been accepted and posted the person who sent the message gets a message themselves. And draw people's attention to it when they sign up.

I know that's a lot of work to set up, and is still open to abuse, takes up more morerators time etc but still, we should be looking for ways forward...

So you mean if somebody sends us a message with high sexual content as first contact, totally unsolicited, we put their names on a list or something?

I was thinking of something similiar.....

My idea would be that people can not send any messages at the beginning and have to "earn" points in order to be able to contact people....if they are good members and don't insult anyone they can send more and more messages per day.

At the beginning you can not send messages, just reply....or send messages to the people that invited you and their friends etc....

There are a lot of possibilities....but in general I like the idea of a points/ranks system...so if people insulted someone they would move down and they need a long time to reach the same status again.....and people would not just create a new profile they had to start from zero again...and it would be too much work to keep several profiles.

I think being guided by innocent until proven guilty would be a good starting point. Look at how people are behaving once its started, you can always raise or lower joining-rights later.

You mean an automatic points system, someone gives you a 'slap' and you loose a point, no slap for a while, gain a point? Sounds good. The occasional heated arguments with one or a few people wouldn't result in the loss of the right to message but persistent offenders would get shut down for a time.

Some further thoughts.
should others see your rating or are they only aware if you get shut down?
a slap should only come from a message to stop miss-use - one message, one slap...
anyone got a better word or term for getting a bad rating or do you like slap

There definitely needs to be a feedback or points system of some kind.

It might help flag some of the downright obnoxious people out there, and cut down on some of the bullshitters/timewasters too.

i wanna name and shame twistedvoilet.......she harrasses me all the time!

Could I name and shame the guy who asked me if I liked to suck brain?