Probationary Members?

[Jamesdoylephoto]

Originally Posted by Pandemikk

Well what do you mean by "prove their real members"? I don't see why you need a mod for this? Just have new users enter a specific usergroup and then have that usergroup have restrictive permissions.

In our case we are a community which has face to face meetings and in the spirit of being a community, we want members to be honest and open about who they are, One of the main reason is that as we conduct outdoor activities in sometimes remote areas is we need to know who the member is in case of an emergency and we have to contact another person who knows them....if they give false or missleading information it creates a legal mind field if something was to happen to them and we were unable to render the proper duty of care.

And let's be to the point here, if you were to join any community or club in a face to face situation you would generally give your real details, such as your name, and that is what our community is, just that we use the internet to organise and discuss up coming activities. It is clearly pointed out in our guidelines and rules before they join why we ask for these details and as far as most of our members are concerned if someone can't or is unwilling to let people know who they are then they probably aren't really interested in the community as a whole.

So with regards to my original question, I was trying to work out a way to perhaps have a system where people that signed up got to engage in the community with limited access and sections which were unavailable until the community had a chance to see if they truely want to be apart of the group. We get a few people that signup, do nothing, have no information in their profile and after a week or two they just start posting spam or inappropiate messages.

I'm sure this isn't new to most forums but as I'm rather new to the concept I'm still finding my way on how to keep good members safe from people that just want to cause trouble.