There are ARA types that search the internet for any mention of animals used for meat. There is a Facebook group for Meat Rabbits that can only be seen by members and all of the posts only show to the members themselves, so anyone in your friend list that is NOT a member cannot see posts related to this group.

I think that is a good idea. By the time someone has made 200 posts, we can be reasonably sure they are not "trolls". Go for it!

Eco2pia, not everyone feels comfortable discussing personal matters in a public forum. Maybe your child is having a problem at school or a close friend has hurt you by some out-of-character action. Maybe you have a problem with depression but don't want the whole world to have access to that information. At the same time you may wish to talk with your forum friends about it. No one HAS TO use the forum just because it is there, but I think a lot of members would be more comfortable talking about personal and family matters in a private forum.

Are you old enough to remember party lines on the telephone? All the neighbours could listen in. This would be like having a private line.

I'd actually say, more like having a party line, where you KNEW who could listen in, instead of the whole damn town (no, and I'm not old enough to remember them, Hell I'm not even old enough to remember when telephone numbers were a WORD then 4 digits as in 'my number is DOG 1234)

the post count as entry works well - as does manually loading people after a certain period of time and recognition of their meaningful cotribution to the board either works

Hmmnn... what do you mean "troll"?

Here's an explanation of the term.

Trolls are known to excite flamers
but neither are consider good examples of Interwebz etiquette.

Eco2pia, there are people who troll the boards like this one trying to start fights. There are also people who don't like to share their thoughts with anonymous "guests". I'm afraid I fall in the camp of "if you don't want people to see it, don't post it on the internet", but.... A PRIVATE forum is only private until a 2nd person gets into it...and no person who posts there will be able to control WHO gets into the forum eventually and sees those posts.

I'm neither for nor against it at this point, btw. Just thinking it over.