The History Book Club discussion

At the History Book Club - private profiles are a problem. We must be able to contact you even if you do not have a private profile.

When we started the History Book Club initially we were a private group and you had to request permission to join our group.

We did not allow folks with private profiles to be members for a variety of reasons.

First, we did not care if a profile had a photo of a flower or their pet as their avatar, what bothered us was an attempt to hide a person's total identity from everyone with zero postings, zero communication and zero attempts to participate. Therefore, we would not allow any private profiles at all.

We, of course, do not want to know a person’s name or their exact location unless there is a free book offer and we only gather that information via private PM, but we would like every member to share something about themselves; so that the group feels “comfortable” interacting with each other and with those individuals with private profiles.

The silent private profiles are the ones that we feel are a serious security problem and we are uncomfortable with them because of the purposeful anonymity.

A virtual environment is not always the safest of environments so actually members
are more suspect of other members who have private profiles; and they should be.

Another reason we did not like private profiles is that we could not send messages from the moderator to the member in case they were not following the rules and guidelines, posting spam, or even to let the member know about something important for the group.

It made communication ten times more difficult if not impossible. Since we were also a private group - all of our members were 18 or over so we knew that we had an adults only group.

We moved from a private group to being a public group.

We became much larger a group and we made ourselves a public group.

When that happened, we realized that goodreads sets up a private profile for those members who might be under 18 which was fine for us.

We only asked that folks even though they had private profiles - had to do a brief introduction and they could share "at that time only if they wanted to" that they were a student - still of course protecting their identity and that worked out for our younger members or they could send a PM.

But they still needed to do an introduction sharing a little something, keeping it brief but protecting their privacy. And that has worked for that group.

What has concerned us recently and we need to find a solution

Unfortunately, what we have seen lately are some folks pretending to be somebody else, trying to fool others into thinking that they are here as contributing members and they hide behind the anonymity. Many are simply trolls and not participating.

We cannot in some cases even send them a message if they post spam, advertising or violate our rules and guidelines in some way.

Others we suspect might be moderators of other groups or other disgruntled former members just trying to create havoc or who are just trolling the site without any intention to contribute or post.

We, of course, have no idea because of these member's attempts to hide their identity through the privacy profile with no means in some cases to contact them. These are the most troubling.

What we have proposed and possible solutions

So because of the above - I want to go over what you can do to make everyone’s job easier and be a member in good standing.

First, in all instances if you have a private profile or not - you must introduce yourself on the welcome thread. That is a must.

Here is the link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

This is not optional.

Second, you should send Bentley a PM and let him know briefly why you have a private profile on the History Book Club site.

If you are a student - you can just indicate that due to your age - you have a private profile and we will make that notation or you can let us know in your introduction still maintaining your absolute privacy.

If you are an adult - please consider making your profile not private on our site and most importantly make sure that we can contact you.

If we cannot contact you and the need arises to be able to do so and we are unable to - we reserve the right to cut you from the membership and we would hate to do that.

Third, you can still hide your identity by using an avatar photo of a pet, a flower, a location, a coffee cup in front of your face and a cute name for yourself if need be.

But please allow us to send you PMs. If we cannot do that, it is not really a conducive relationship for us having you as a member. And I am not sure what you are getting out of it.

Fourth, we want to make it clear that even though you may have a private profile - we still have requirements for participation. They are not a lot but we do have some. They are really quite simple, actually.

That means you must post your introduction and allow us to reach you via PM. (takes 2 minutes)

You must respond with a yes, no or maybe to event notifications sent out - only one per book. (takes one second or click)

You must respond to polls (one second) and you can participate by adding books to our threads (a minute or two), you could participate in a buddy read or a spotlighted book.

You could also participate in 50 Books or 100 Movies. There are many ways to contribute.

But what we do not want is for a private profile to act as a mask for other intentions that do not benefit the group.

So if you are not here to contribute in any way and are masking your identity for some other reason other than privacy and you do not contribute, you may find that you are one group short and wonder why.

We want to give everyone an opportunity to not have a private profile that prohibits contact on the HBC or from the moderating team. And we are here to help you in any way that we can while at the same time protecting your absolute right to privacy.

I have a private profile because I have a limitation on the time that I can spend conversing with random people on the web. I allow myself to be contacted by any History Book Club member who is here and participating. I am also available via the Moderator's Announcement's Thread. So please reach out and I will help you or any other moderator will help you in any way they can.

Just do not be silent, unable to be reached, and not contributing. We call those members trolls.

What might occur:

Randomly we will reach out to members with private profiles to see if they are real members and ask what we can do to help them participate or if there is something that we can do to assist them or make them feel more comfortable. If we get no response, that will leave us little recourse to be able to assist. So please make sure to be responsive to all of the moderating team.