There has been some recent comments by posters on who should be allowed to become members here at Expatica. This is a somewhat informal poll but we're interested in your opinions.

Option 1: Expats who live or work in the Euro communities serviced by Expatica?

Option 2: Include Expats who have lived / worked or are planning on living / working in the Euro communities serviced by Expatica?

Option 3: Open to anyone who wants to become a member here at Expatica?


My personal thoughts are: option #2. It includes those who have valuable insight to the Expat experience and those who are seeking that insight. Opening it up to anyone allows individuals with their own personal agendas and no real interest in the Expat community to post here. What do you think?

I don't see how one would really go about enforcing #1 and #2 so I'm going to go with #3.

There will always be non-expats with an agenda who come here to campaign or rant about something, but I think the membership here are pretty good at self-moderating...the non-expats never seem to stick around for long. They are usually only a temporary annoyance (or entertainment!).

And cloggieking is right...How do you enforce? As Dr. House says, "Everybody lies!"

Well you could manage it by monitoring the i.p. addresses, though there are ways round that, as there are ways round pretty much everything on the internet.

True...but if someone is researching a move here, or used to live here, then IP addresses are pretty irrelevant.

I say option 2 but as others say, it's hard to enforce....

I find that the Dutch people who wind up on these forums detract from things because they're either trying to stir things up - or they try to be reasonable but get "attacked" by some of the harsher members of the forums and then leave anyway...

I also read a German forum and there is nowhere near the amount of negativity you see here - I don't know if that's because there's simply less to be negative about, the forum rules there or just the type of "expat" you get in NL as opposed to Germany...

Expatica as an exclusive membership site? Get a grip.

Putting a limit on who can participate seems pretty juvenile.

Once people join should they have to do an Expatica Inburgering course or prove that they contribute in a positive manner to the Expatica society?

Oh the hypocrisy!

Just out of curiosity I had a look at the French, German, Spanish & Belgian forums and none of them seemed to evoke the responses or criticisms of the respective nationalities as you find in Expatica Netherlands. I wonder why that is?? Is it, as you mentioned, because there is less to be negative about in those countries or the type of expat? Or is it the fact that the expat or immigrant is more easily accepted in the other places? Strange! The French forum had very positive posts in general and gave the impression that most people were pretty satified with the quality of life there, which is not something that comes across often on the NL boards (i.e. shopping and poor customer service, Dutch being rude etc. etc.).

I had a look, and the French one seems OK, but the Belgian one is pretty dead and what's there seems to be quite negative. More negative than the NL board in fact.

The bigot view that Expatica should be restricted in any way in this day and age is simply put preposterous and not even worth talking about! I'm wondering in what kind of brain such an odd idea could pop up!
Personally I don't even agree with the word "membership" for a fortuitous and ephemeral internet association of people who don't even know each other!! The only thing we have in common is that most of us are "Strangers in a Strange Land", were so or are planning to be so. I know I have to register and to log in to be able to post in Expatica or other forums but in my view that's not a "real" membership, involving political, philosophical, religious or social opinions.
More and maybe much more important, it is not a guarantee for freedom of speech and expression since Admin has its own T&C's, which it applies as it likes to do.

I agree with your words, if not your indignation, but that's nothing new!

To be fair to mikeyt, it was motivated by posters like our horse lady and smokem from other countries who sign up with an agenda and no interest or knowledge regarding the forum they have joined. Not to mention spammers, who are usually from Asia.

They can be an annoyance, but I figure only a temporary one...and I think we all do a smashing job of self-moderating myself because they never stick around for very long.

T&Cs btw, are often not a black and white thing...and they do try to strike a delicate balance between ensuring some sort of freedom of speech and keeping the forum somewhat civilized. They're not perfect, and they never will be...

Bigotry, come on.

99% of the problems could be dealt with (including spam) if new posters had their first 10-20 posts monitored by the staff. This has been asked of Expatica many times. Other boards do it.

"Staff"?

The "staff" here are a collective of volunteer mods who do this in their spare time with the direction of an Admin who also has other tasks as part of his job. That's it.

In the background, we see all the posts, and either make them invisible for further discussion or for deletion by Admin...or we discuss them in our own forum. There's no way however that we can hold back posts for "approval"...it's just not workable. The only reason I'm here as much as I am is because I'm between jobs and have no kids...But that will end as soon as I'm employed again.

There is no such thing as a 'perfect' forum...but I think problems are being dealt with pretty well considering. And I wouldn't want to have a gang of "staff" because as a result, the members here take a measure of ownership over the forum, and I think that's how it should be, personally.

I respect that you help out here, but their seems to be plenty of advertisements here, so there could be a paid staff, no?

I've been to the offices...It's a skeleton staff, trust me.

What exactly *are* the "problems"?

If spam is removed and trolls are not engaged then everything is perfect, no?

As perfect as it can possibly get...Once you've moderated a while, you get a sense of who's a real member and who's using the forum to sell something, whether it's shoes or an idea. And you get to learn their tricks.

But if one can't handle seeing a piece of spam appear at all first thing in the morning before it gets deleted an hour later, then the internet ain't for you.

Trolls are an issue and i've yet to see a troll come on this site who hasn't been 'engaged' to some degree. Yes, Canucky Woman is right, we seem to do a reasonably good job at self-moderating albeit with a fair bit of 'acid' (particularly on the Dutch board) thrown around to quell the problem.

My initial post was generated due to comments of some of our "members" (for lack of a better word) regarding who should be 'allowed" to post here. They were designed to generate some discussion amongst you. So yes Emilio, i guess the questions 'popped up' in my brain, possibly at a time that i was sitting on it.

Emilio: I see you've taken the opportunity (as you frequently do) to take another shot at the mods and admin for your perceived injustices. Forget to take your meds again?

Some people take the interwebs very seriously!

Hi Mikeyt! Yes, I took my 9 pills this morning and I have another 5 still to go tonite... So, nothing to be afraid of!
In my view there is a world of a difference between "injustices" and "perceived injustices". The reason why I sometimes "take another shot" (although that's not exactly how I would personally describe it) to use your own words, is that in the past there have been cases of double standards. Some people ( like Q and I) were banned and others were not, although those others uttered the most gross personal insults and attacks (something Q and I have never done).
So my friend, presenting things as if I'm a monomaniac is very far from the objective truth. But safer for your own sanity as a Mod...But you knew that already, didn't you? Btw, have you ever read seriously the threads I'm incriminating? They are very easy to search in the Archives you know! I suppose not...

A very "elaborate" explanation Emilio. Thank you.

emilio...you are no angel; you have a tendency to get carried away when you get p-d off. And when you came back under another name, we knew damned well it was you from the get-go...and we let you stay because we knew you weren't a troll...Let's say it was a cyber "time-out".

I think it's time to let it go, don't you?

Oh well, it's almost two years ago, why not? I won't come back on it...
And it's true that I have a tendency of getting pissed off by people who never apologised in any way for their gross insults, even today continue to post only negative views ( when challenged to post positive things they refuse) and, when I oppose those, try to belittle or ridicule what I'm saying, doing their best to play with words instead of going into the debate. It is true that I really despise that kind of people, who only appear on these boards for the sake of a "hidden fight", not to help other expats or communicate with them, like most of us.
But, once again, what do I get out of it? Nothing! I 'd better do what the Dutch describe as " in hun eigen sopje laten gaar koken..."!

Anyway.....back to the original question. Anyone else want to offer up an opinion? Dont whine later about not having a say in the matter....

my vote is for 3 also.

Also #3.

aw Canucky woman have i found another Dr. House fan yee haa i love the man keep having to remind myself that he is really Hugh Lawrie ha ha and as he also says according to a great philospher " you cant always get what you want" so ther you go mikeyt

'so ther you go.....' I'm assuming there was a point to be made there. I have no issues with things remaining status quo (option 3) and i think option #1 was way too restrictive but i lean towards #2.

Ok, I'll chime in now! I don't think anyone should be prevented from joining so long as they aren't a spammer. Trolls tend to sort themselves out. I think the forum should be open to anyone because it is a great resource of information. I have a kind of unspoken criterion for if I choose to respond to someone.

Does this person currently, formerly, or planning to be living here?
Is this person asking questions or contributing information in a non-combative nature.
Is this person Dutch and trying to have a conversation and not just stir the pot.

We've had a few odd trolls here and there the last few weeks, but most of them have been weeded out anyway. The regular trolls are quite obvious, and get bored if not responded to. I think I also helped contribute to troll removal by trolling the troll with some light Geert Wilders hair humor. Always does the trick.

I lurked this forum for almost a year before joining, at the time the vibe was pretty negative. Right now I think there is only a small amount of bickering, but no one has to get involved if they don't want to. The atmosphere of the forum is created by the users. And at the end of the day, it is just the interwebs...

I agree.

And really, who cares if a few sneak through in the first place? I give a lot of credit to those who aren't "officially" moderators, because they do help with moderating by giving us a head's up, challenging trolls and generally making them feel unwelcome, and I thank you all for that! And, as you point out, even the process of eliminating them can be fun sometimes!

mkitchell talking about spam a year back I had given a good and practical solution to admin as how to stop them but nothing happened .

And my vote is for option #3 I don't see any reason how one can stop people joining this forum after all it is free service and spam user comes free on any internet forums out there.

Expatica is kind of family and I think the dutch xenophobic attitude got few user out here hence this thread against 'other' (foreigner) users . No offenses mikeyt but I didn't expected this thread from you...but good to talk about it and know everyone's opinion .

That was exactly the reason i started this thread. 'Good to talk about and know everyone's opinion'. That way if there is a concensus out there that changes should be made then they can be considered by Expatica rather than just blindly making a change and waiting to see what the feedback is like.

What would this forum be without some genuine Dutch reef sharks? Keeps you on the alert.

no kidding!

Okay, some pissed off herrings maybe...