With growth of a forum comes the inevitable problems, and this place is no exception. After everything ran fairly smoothly for the first four months (with the exception of some early technical issues), I knew that problems were likely around the corner. It's kind of like playing a long cash session and not taking a single bad beat or cooler. You know it can't last.

Over the past few weeks, we've had two problems here:

1) False or unsubstantiated accusations of fraud against regular users.

2) "Bombing" of the forum with pornography by dupe accounts.

I'll get to the easier one first -- the bombing.

Many of you have suggested that I appoint mods. Others have volunteered to be mods. While I appreciate the suggestions and the offers to help, I am going to hold steady to my original plan of having no mods.

So, without these mods, how can I prevent the forum being bombed with gay pornography every morning?

It's not hard to prevent this at all. I have already installed measures here to prevent against that, and when I have more time, I will put in further preventative measures. All of this will be invisible to the regular user, and won't affect anyone besides those trying to do this place harm.

I am also going to write a program that allows a few very trusted individuals to "clean up" such bombings, without giving them access to ANY of the user information or admin functions.

I can't promise that there won't be more of these bombings, but they will be decreasing in number, and will soon be all but gone.


Now... onto the harder part: The false/unsubstantiated accusations.

I started PokerFraudAlert to enable anyone to call out anyone else in poker that cheated them. The accusations can be against a company, a casino, an individual, an online site, a tournament series, etc. Basically, if you got ripped off in any way related to poker, I wanted this to be the place where you could show up and tell your story.

That's still what I want.

However, there is a fine line between reasonable accusation and libel/defamation.

I want to allow users here to accuse others of wrongdoing (whether these "others" are members here or not), but I also don't want this forum to be used as a springboard to write untrue/unfair things about people, eventually having the threads show up in google.

Therefore, I am instituting the following new rules, in addition to the rules we already have here:

1) All accusations must come from the affected party. That means you can't bring accusations on behalf of "your friend" or something you heard through the grapevine. This applies only to individuals. You may accuse a company of wrongdoing, provided that the company isn't a 1 or 2-man operation. You may also repost accusations if they are already playing out on a large, reputable forum (such as 2+2 or Pocketfives) and the evidence strongly suggests the person is guilty.

ALLOWED: "John Smith borrowed $10,000 from me last January, and now isn't taking my phone calls."

ALLOWED: "John Smith rolled Mike Jones for $10,000. Here is a link to the 2+2 thread about it, and it looks very clear that John really did it."

ALLOWED: "My friend got ripped off by shadypokersite.com. He doesn't want to come forward himself, because he really wants to get paid back, but I'm warning everyone not to play there. Here's what I witnessed..."

NOT ALLOWED: "One of my friends borrowed 10k from John Smith last January, and John isn't paying my buddy back."




2) You must be willing to present evidence to prove that your accusation is legitimate. If you don't want to present it publicly, you must contact me before posting the thread and present the evidence to me privately.

ALLOWED: "Here is an e-mail from John Smith from May where he admits to owing me 10k, but claims he's going through a lot of stuff and can't pay."

NOT ALLOWED: "I have some e-mails proving that John really borrowed that 10k from me and won't pay back, but I am not going to post them right now. But trust me, everything I wrote is true."




3) You may not repost anything from users who are banned or not allowed to have an account on PokerFraudAlert.

ALLOWED: "Ryan Gonzales doesn't have an account on PFA, and as far as I know you haven't pre-banned him, but he browsed this site and wrote some pretty bad stuff about it on 2+2. Here's what he wrote..."

NOT ALLOWED: "I know that Bill McDonald isn't allowed on PFA anymore, but he posted some pretty bad stuff about you on another forum, and I'm wondering what your response is to everything he wrote. Here's a copy of what he posted..."




4) You must have evidence of what you're accusing, or at least a story that is verifiable in some way. I will be the sole judge of this.

ALLOWED: "John Smith borrowed 20k from me in 2011. I don't have direct evidence of this, but he borrowed it for the WSOP, played three $3000 NL events and the Main Event, and didn't cash in any of them. He still hasn't paid me. Respected poker player Jack Barnes witnessed me lending the money, and he can come forward if anyone doubts this."

NOT ALLOWED: "John Smith borrowed 20k from me in 2011 but won't pay back! I won't say who I am, and I have no way to prove it, but trust me, he borrowed 20k."



I am willing to discuss changing any of the above rules. These are just my ideas on how to prevent false and unfair accusations, while not stifling people's ability to out scammers or repost reputable threads where it appears someone is truly guilty. However, until I agree to changing them, the above rules will apply immediately and retroactively.

Again, if you have any question whether starting a new accusatory thread is okay, please PM me.

Finally, please post all accusatory threads in the Scams, Scandals, and Shadiness forum. That's where they belong. If you're posting it here, it's more likely you're just looking for attention rather than trying to really warn anyone about a scammer.

I am going to lock the recent threads from 4BET, as they are no longer allowed per the above rules.

Do not attempt to restart a locked thread or I will remove your posting access.