Members' location

Ive seen 2 ways to do this This site does have a location tab in the profile that you can fill in but its never double checked. It wouldnt be hard to put this under a user name but its not hard to look on the rare occasion it would be useful. Another much bigger forum Im on does inspect your ip at every post and puts the country flag under your post. Accurate most of the time but it would tell you for this post that Im in Australia which Im not

Agreed, good idea. Voluntary though, not based on ip.

May have to standardise what is in the location field. Mine used the find on a map and is just coordinates

Is this something the forum community would want? I am also on an international forum and members there can choose a flag to have under their name... obviously that wouldn't suit this forum. I can imagine a tiny map of NZ with a red spot based on what you put in the location part of your profile (which is optional isn't it?).

It gets tricky. I dont know how intelligent the back end of this forum is or even whether the location data available via reverse dns is reliable enough to use as a location identifier Mine currently gets me within 400 meters of home in Wellington but it used to have me in Auckland. I know if I post from work all our internet goes via a vns server in Australia so I would appear as being there. That would be the only way to get an up to date location though. If that doesnt work and I suspect it would be a lot of effort to make it work and would have to ask if its even worth trying then we are back to relying on the info in your profile page. I dont mind if mine says Wellington but it will always say Wellington even if Im holidaying in Queenstown etc

too many small towns in NZ and people should have the right to veto having their location show up. I've had one past forum member get extremely aggressive with me after they left the group when they found another way of communicating with me, and they were posing as another forum member to try and create further inappropriate conflict. If you're in a rural area or small town and where you live can be pinpointed to within a few hundred metres and you dont want to attract unecessary attention or have unwanted people tracking you down, then you don't want your location revealed. ironically the person who got aggressive with me did it on a blog with divulges IP address. i would rather not be living near people doing that sort of behaviour in a small town or low density population, theres the chance for people to work out where you live or come across you if they are that way inclined. sure usually the people on the forum here come across as decent people but it just takes one bad apple to cause you grief. people here a discussing topics that they disagree on from time to time and unfortunately some people can take disagreements rather personally as happened to me.

I think the key things would be: - voluntary - vague location rather than precise address

This is a small forum and I think a fair portion here know many others in the forum so its already far from anominous

@geeves, I don't have an issue about that, but I dont want it made public on the internet to all members of the forum and or whoever looks on the internet. as i've mentioned i've had issues with one person making undesireable contact that i'd rather not have. i'm a big boy and can handle myself, but there are bigger issues especially when you get grown men giving unwanted attention towards younger people and women... in the future there may well be a few more individuals who give unwanted attention to other forum members and those members may not want their location made public. my location is deceptive anyway, i live at one end of the country and do most of my tramping towards the other end. . i still get a air bit of exercise, but for various reasons beyond my control, most of the exercise i do around where i live isnt tramping...