With the new War Diary come some new capabilities. Here's something I want to run past this group, to see what the general acceptance is like.

I now have the capability of creating what could be called "online Messes" for the lack of a better term.

These would essentially be private forums in The War Diary, one for each of the normal CF Messes.

The initial members would be chosen from a trusted group of existing War Diary users. New members would be selected and would have to be verified before having access to their Mess.

These messes would be tightly monitored to ensure no inappropriateness occurs. Mess members who do not fit the criteria will be booted. Based on the behaviour of this group to date, I don't think this will be a problem.

Some good points about this:

• Eavesdropping from external/civilian sources wouldn't be a concern.
  
• Some topics are probably best suited for specific audiences. (I.E. boring or inappropriate for all.)
  

Some concerns I have:

• Do we have enough traffic to support 3 new forums?
  
• Should this type of thing be left in the Mess? (Or should it be moved outside the Mess, to a forum such as this?)
  
• Would there be issues verifying who belongs to which mess?
  
• Are civilians really the ones we're worried about "eavesdropping" on us? (You know what I'm talking about...)
  

As I said, it's just a thought. It is technically possible, so now we just have to decide if it's worth proceeding or not. If there is enough interest, I'll set it up, on a trial basis. I suspect there is going to be some hesitation to accept this, but I will throw it out as an option none the less.

Let me know what you think, and as always, feel free to make other suggestions as well.

Cheers

Mike Bobbitt
CdnArmy.ca

Mike Bobbit writes: 'The initial members would be chosen from a trusted group of existing War Diary users. New members would be selected and would have to be verified before having access to their Mess.'

These trusted members are probably also the same guys doing most of the posting. If you set up private areas, you may see most of the content on the boards disappear into those private areas. The risk would be that we'd lose the valuable cross debate in the public forums that gives the board much of its liveliness and relevance. Without that, how would the board ever grow?

Cheers,

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