Originally Posted by khuon
I for one think it's a shame that the women's forum got closed off to the general public. I'm not sure why women's topics need to be only accessable to women. A saw a lot of women asking questions that exacted plenty of good advice and information from the men. I also saw some very valid threads in that forum started by men who were inquiring on behalf of their female friends. Besides... what's to stop someone from pretending to be female to get into Women's Cycling? This is the Internet... that kind of thing happens all the time.
Agreed. It's just about impossible to validate someone's gender over the internet, unless you ask for a webcam check, and even that can be forged.
I understand there were some offensive things posted in there, although I didn't visit it often enough to see any of them myself. Personally, I think a better course of action would have been to simply block the access of the individuals who posted that content via their IP, which is far easier to distinguish than someone's gender. Ultimately I think that will happen anyway -- particularly if people start lying about their gender. Anyone who's ever visited a chat-room will know how often that happens.
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That is all.