Quote Originally Posted by Wolfspet View Post
I also agree I would like to meet people to be able to have someone who gets where I am coming from, have coffee and a solid conversation. Being I live in nowheresville just beyond the lake in Minnesota it is impossible. Add to this I have looked on other sites and get a ton of hook up requests but that is not what I want either... I really do enjoy the people here, this is a great place to be.
There is a solution to this... one list I am on (a yahoo list local to the area) has regular adverts from all the local munches so members can see where and when locals are meeting. If those who organise munches (and I know a few on here who do) or those who get details of them from other places were to post those details somewhere in this site then this would give everyone information about the local scene. If it isn't local to you then you can ignore it, if it is local to you but you are not interested/don't want to be revealed to anyone then you can ignore it. If you are interested, you can go to the munch without revealing to the rest of the site your location. You don't even have to tell the people at the munch who you are on the site if yuo don't want to but if you do you may find a lot more people who recognise you from your handle and therefore fit in better.

As for IP addresses.... you can get that without knowing location if you know what to do. Many sites log the IP address of computers posting to them and at the very least the moderators/admin can get access to it. This is mainly so that they can prevent banned posters from creating a new ID and continuiing to cause hassle - they ban the IP address rather than the user id.

It is however each individual poster's free choice as to whether they post their location or not. The board does not make it a required field in the profile (many do, the moderators could, if they chose, make it a required field in registration). It is a shame that so few wish to do so but that is their choice. I do it out of a desire to see if I am indeed the only person from Birmingham on this site... so far no one has proven me wrong...