Suggestion: A Vouching System, To establish IRL legitimacy of a user

Dear All,

Here is a suggestion I had for the board.

One of the things that seems to be mentioned often in the personals section is frustration at timewasters who arrange to meet and then change their minds for no apparent reason, or turn out not to have animals as initially claimed, be a troll or a different age or marital status than advertised etc.

I thought one way to help get around this is to introduce a system where members can vouch for the authenticity of one another in terms of IRL meets and interactions. For example, if person A meets up with person B and finds them to be legitimate, they can vouch for that person. That way, person C can notice that person B comes recommended when deciding whether or not to contact them about meeting.

At the most simple level, this could be implemented using a new 'Vouching' subforum, with each topic being a person's username. People could then add replies (or perhaps 'vote' anonymously on a poll) about that person's authenticity. Perhaps a standardised form of categorisation could be implented, attesting to the person's various attributes being correct and the level of interaction that occurred with that person.

At a more complex level, perhaps this could be integrated into the board itself via user profiles in a similar way to how the voting and warn system currently function.

Obviously this system is only as effective as the honesty and genuineness of the people doing the vouching, and is not intended as a replacement for thorough communication and common sense. But it might help to take some of the frustration out of using the personals section and not getting anywhere.

In addition, things would want to be done in such a way as to maintain the relative anonymity of those involved in these real-life meets. The system would simply validate the information already provided by a user, rather than going into depth about what occurred during any meets.

Feel free to give me your feedback on this idea.

Tofudebeast

This comes with the territory. No way around it. I don't think your suggestion has any chance of being implemented. :wacko:

I have no idea whether it has any chance of being implemented - admin moves in mysterious ways - but I think it's brilliant.

10 from me.