I recently saw a discussion on a forum where the admin of another forum used private, sensitive information that he learned on his forum to attack a poster. This is an eye opener when the admin owns a forum where he has access to sensitive information on users that if improperly handled, could affect not only their jobs but potentially have them deported from the country that they work in.
What is especially shocking is the admin has promised the users on his forum he will NEVER reveal personal details. His users, not to mention his admins have put a great deal of personal trust in this admin. Perhaps this trust was misplaced. Even the moderators that work with this admin did NOTHING on the other forum, where several are members. It shows even they fear being the next victim of this crazy admin.
So who will be next? Will it be you this admin “outs” publicly? What steps do you take to protect yourself when posting potentially damaging information about yourself?
Filed under: General | Tagged: TEFLWatch - When will the shame end?
Totally agree with you here, you should also check out his new rules which he has applied ex post facto I believe. in them he gives himself the right to disclose personal information. he also states publically that the site will not back the users in the event of anything untoward happening. given this and the outrageous way he confronted a school recently, in a manner that would almost force the school to take action against a member of the forum and you have to start asking yourself some serious questions about why you are there!
Further to my last comment, the school was confronted because it asked for information about one of the users of the site. Whilst it must be said that this happened before the new rules were put in place, and this time the admin did indeed refuse to give the information requested. however the gist of the ongoing thread implied that the school was indeed taking action against the user and indeed the user against the school.
Well, we all know that the Samson against Golieth metaphor rarely works in Thailand, and so one would assume that the school held the winning hand. Yet when I checked through the members list today I noted that the user in question had disappeared from the list!
Does this mean that the user has chosen to disappear from the forum? Does it mean that once all the problems were created by the administrator, that he banned the user and effectively washed his hands and left the user to the fates? Maybe the answers to these questions are out there somewhere, but what is noticable is the complete silence of the administrator regarding the matter apart from a rarther limp wristed apology for having acted using his prehensile brain and not his normal brain!
Thanks a million! Finally a fan site!
Just what TW needs! 
Come on Greg do your Snoop Dogg impersonation next…Dawg!
I think its about time the admin of TEFL Watch is subjected to the ridicule he so richly deserves.
It should be noted that “Andy” is actually the admin of TEFLWatch.
Having installed, managed and even moderated a few web boards I find it technically impossible to disclose any ’sensitive’ information. Most boards require only a user name, an email address, and a password. Nobody is obliged to enter true personal details in a profile page, so anonymity is guaranteed. Even if anyone was crazy enough to hack the server, the php, and crack the sql there’s nothing of interest in it. The only exception is Dave”s ESG Café which really goes OTT on requiring personal details with every new registration. Even then it’s hardly likely that the admin run any checks, just as it is highly unlikely that with the empire he has built up over the last 8 years, that Dave personally has much to do with his website nowadays. Even ThaiVisa and the wooden door now have to rely heavily on decent members pressing the panic button, or other members calling posters to order. And talking about panic buttons – where have they all gone from the latest versions of forum software?
The only way a problem can arise is if a board member is personally known to another who then reveals the true identity through a posting. An honest moderator should be quick to defend the fundamental principle of anonymity and delete the post. In the early days of forums, (and if I remember correctly, Ajarn was one of them), the administrators checked the option in the CP to approve all submitted posts before publishing them. Admittedly on a site like with 500 new posts arriving every hour, one would need a team of twenty mods working round the clock to do that – and on such a large team it is inevitable that there will be a rotten apple in the barrel.
Many of the probs arise because the mods are not even personally known to the administrator – they get where they are by joining and making a lot of intelligent posts to instill confidence to become a mod, to later abuse their position of responsibility and work on their own agenda.
Anyone with a web domain and a hosting can start a forum, nobody needs to be a geek to do it and the price of a domain is less than a couple of beers in Soi Cowboy. – many are even free like this blog. A truly commercial sites need to pay at least some lip service to their advertisers otherwise they will lose them, but one thing is sure: the admin would need to be awake around the clock. Where probably a bit of naming is justified, is when an organisation is clearly and provably working a scam, (and we all know which one is the prime candidate for that label). The posters, however, want to be really sure of their facts and not just post on heresay.
There is now a plethora of TESOL forums out there and thier owners will just have to live with the competition and learn to stop calling each other names.
Many Thai boards today are full of trolls and the worst ones don’t even live in Thailand, nevertheless they are hell bent on cranking up their posting clocks with single smileys, one-liners, and expletives, daily searching every forum on the board to get their oar in wherever they can. They are totally obnoxious and will start a flaming war for funwhen they have nothing better to contribute.
In the past , people have tried to build up an almost complete database of schools in LOS with the intention of making a colour list, but it never works, the most cards you get in the db are never more than a dozen or so, and it’s a drop in the ocean. If anyone has the guts, the time and the stupidity to do it, a suggestion would be to create a blog of the nicknames of those nasty posters instead, and drop a link to it in every offending thread.
The bottom line is that instead of being a benefit to the world of TESOL, most forums are now so full of BS and claptrap it makes the world of TESOL – from teachers to ESOL trainers – look like a bunch of losers and boozers – which from my experience, sadly, far too many of them are.
Good, honest moderating (editing, warning, deleting) without getting involved is all that is required and if a forum bites the dust, that’s exactly what was lacking. Three new Thailand TESOL boards have opened in the last three weeks, time will tell if anything really changes.