This is exactly why reports are anonymous. Of course, in some areas, this still isn't enough. There are currently several methods of further restricting information.

Require approval for group membership - when someone requests membership, a group manager will need to approve them before they can participate. This may prove to be difficult with such a large community.

Private groups - your group will only be visible to people you specifically invite. Unfortunately, in practice, this also seems to lessen participation by the 'good guys'.

Make use of the 'block member' function - group members can block undesirable members and prevent them from interacting with your group.


Please note that reports are tried to a geographic location - not a particular community group. It would be possible for someone to create their own group and see copies of local reports. Of course, reports are anonymous and you can add any sensitive information to the 'private details' section of the report. Generally, when someone does get 'upset' about reports, they make their threats to us. They don't know who else to get upset with :)

Thanks for the quick reply. I think that my main concern is that if a tech saavy drug dealer were to find this site and view the reports they would be able to pretty easily determine who is the "snitch" based on the geographic location. This is the case at least for my first report where the incident occurred at my home address. I may need to think about anonymizing my event descriptions in the future.

There are existing 'trust' models for this. Basically you can't join unless someone who IS trusted sponsors you.

Of course, this model doesn't account a spy in the organization but if you have that problem in your neighborhood then you're probably already in contact with the FBI.

How many block captains do you have? We are planning for 10 to 15 (one per block or 7-house group). The BC's will be coordinated under one over-arching "Security Service" component of our evolving grass roots government. Perhaps you could have each BC (trusted, I presume) to handle registering and accounting for members in his/her block. If they don't approve a person, that person gets no access. What do you think?