Re: Project Pluto Users Website

sebastien_vaast Apr 18, 2002

Hi Laurent.

I fully understand your concern about privacy. I'll explain why you
need to register and give your e-mail address.

First, I think that anonymous posting on a forum is not a good
thing : it's always better to know who posted a question and who
responded to it, like we are doing right now in fact. In fact
anonymous posting IS possible on the site if I configure it. But I
feel uncomfortable answering someone with "Hi anonymous" instead
of "Hi Laurent". Using membership can help to create bonds between
Project Pluto users.

When you register, you need to give a real e-mail address because a
password is mailed to you. You can, if you want it, add personal
information like real name, ICQ, MSN, AIM or MSN address, country of
origin, etc. The only requirement is your e-mail address. Why ?
Because some features on the site need it : you can configure your
account so that if someone reply to you you get a mail to tell you
that. You can also ask to "Watch a topic" : when someone posts an
answer, you get a mail. Another benefit of registering is the private
messages members can exchange. That's an on-site feature, meaning
that your e-mail or other personal information is not needed. But an
option allows the site to mail you when you receive a private message
so your e-mail address is needed here. BUT, you have to keep in mind
that these are only options and that you can configure your account
to not use them. Once you are registered, you can edit your account
and change your e-mail (or other personal information) to a fake one
if you want. I can also change it directly for you in the database.
Private messages could be very interesting to directly share
experience with another member. For example, if you're from Portugal
and find another Guide user is also from that country (using the
Memberslist) and want to contact him, you could send a PM to him even
if he uses a fake e-mail address.

As you can see, it's a very flexible system and your privacy is
preserved. Anyway, it's important to state that the database where
accounts are saved is not Lycos property. I mean they do not have
direct access to it. Your passwords are also encrypted in the
database. Besides, I can save the base in seconds, totally delete it
and move to another web host without leaving a single personal
information on Lycos.

Since we're into privacy and security, I want to stress the fact that
I'm using PHP Nuke, phpBB and MySQL which are all Open Source
softwares. That means that the source code is free and that it is
under strong scrutiny by hundreds of people everyday to insure there
is no backdoors or security issues.

I think the main advantage of the forums on the site is clarity :
there are categories (which can be expanded at will, for example if
it appears that a lot of Spanish users need one forum, it could be
done in seconds) and the topics could be better browsed than on the
mailing list (I think). You are not bothered with Yahoo ad in place
of posts from time to time. You can also post "stickies" that stay on
top of topics, for example if there is an important announcement. You
can make powerful searches. You can also ban people if they are
disturbing the forum.

True, the main inconvenient is that you don't receive posts in your
mailbox though it is possible to create a newsletter which could
include interesting discussion and news and mail it say once a week
(he he, if you used your true email address ;-)

When I decided to try to make that site, I thought that it might be a
good idea to gather all Project Pluto Activity (meaning forums, news,
article and of course users) around one site. It's even possible to
dream of a www.projectpluto.com site that would include both the
current one and all that I'm proposing here.

What is important to note is that we can control everything on the
site and in the database and that's a great benefit over Yahoo.

As I said in my original post, if a lot of users feel the site is
useful, I could buy a domain name and host the site on a professional
service. We could then get rid of ads and privacy concern.

On the other hand, if you don't think the site is useful, I will
delete it and all personal informations.

Feel free to comment !

----
Sébastien Vaast