Obnoxious comments generally stem from the fact that users are anonymous. They feel like they can say what they want without consequence because they think they are protected by anonymity. Having dealt with some of these problems myself this week, I can tell you that legally anonymity does not exist. Dealing with harassment, slander and protection orders can be attained very easily. thehubSA will have to either by choice or court order cooperate with police investigators- exposing the alleged perpetrator and all electronic correspondence, account information, IPs etc. These offenses are dealt with just as severely as real life/ non-virtual offenses. A recommendation would be to create user transparency by removing pseudonyms and having thehubsa enforce user transparency. Terms and conditions should be setup that violation of not using your real name, will result in current and future banning from the site. Getting people to take responsibility for what they say is the only way to effectively deal with these problems. Transparency generates its own self governing rules of conduct. Without that, constant over site and enforcement will always have leaks and require far more constant attention. If people are really concerned about remaining anonymous for some reason, then a suggestion is that if you want to make a comment in a post, it can only be recorded with a real name. Then if you have a genuine concern and want to create a post, it will keep you anonymous. Anonymous comments (and anonymous by virtue of pseudonym) within posts are where the problems are. If you have something of value to say, criticism or rant there is no reason why a person needs to hide behind an avatar. Honesty inspires honesty. Likewise dishonesty spirals towards more dishonesty.
