[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Paul B. at 25 Jul 2003 23:17:56: A sugggestion which has a downside
As an answer to: Re: A good sugggestion written by Robin at 25 Jul 2003 13:19:08:
The straightforward problem with display of IP addresses - which may or may not be offered as a "feature" by the scripting which "drives" the particular forum, is that you may in fact discourage posts from the very people you would truly value as contributors.
Professional people are less likely to be posting from a dynamic "AOL" or similar IP address which is completely anonymous, but desire anonymity simply because they are indeed - professional people, and the last thing they would want, is the possibility of being methodically and offensively spammed and otherwise abused by mindless morons who managed to locate by "back-tracking", their "real" e-mail address, phone numbers, fax numbers, Snail mail address etc.
And as I have said, AOL and similar, from where you may expect large numbers of "non-professional" lurkers, are now masquerading large sections of their traffic through half a dozen IP addresses, making them completely meaningless.
While "Hashing" might be of limited value, unless you are in a position to write the scripts yourself - forget it!