Petition to extend the reporting of registered domain

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@grant Good advice about registering our best names before submitting them to a contest. I kept saying the same. I would never submit a name with good branding potential without making sure that the name is secured beforehand.

A bit of off-topic, but why is the forum public in the first place? Does it not make more sense to be exclusively for the SH community (creatives, sellers, designers and SH team)? Honestly I can’t imagine a scenario where contest holders and domain buyers (SH clients) will need to come to the forum anyway.

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Why can all see the forum? I can answer that one for you…because we have creatives who are also contest holders and we have creatives who are also domainers and vice-versa.

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1.) I do think that reporting should be allowed for as long as the contests is pending a winner selection . After all some contest are ending for months at a time.
2.) Since most Whois information is now private, I’m not sure what reporting can do other than maybe let SHadmin keep track of CH’s that have reports againt their contest.
3.) Stop the CH’s that run multiple contests, abandon them with out choosing a winner and then have multiple reports of domain reg.

Now as far as an unregistered name being stolen. If you dont own it…It cant be stolen
Have you ever entered a contest with a name you thought was a great fit only to get a pop-up that says this entry has already been submitted by another creative. Happens to me all the time, just goes to show that no matter how unique you think your entry is, sometimes others have thought of it too.

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@LisaMac @grant
You are only partially right Lisa.

First — you do realize that the main site (at http://squadhelp.com) and the forum (at http://discussion.squadhelp.com) are actually two different websites, right? The only common thing between them is that they share parts of the same users database (only login details) which is automatically synchronized between the two. Have you noticed that you can’t register through the subdomain, you can only log in? In order to use the forum you have to already have created an account on SquadHelp. (Don’t pay attention to the Facebook button - this is just something that developers haven’t finished, abandoned it and forgot about it. It’s not active anyway.)

Second — when a new user signs up on SquadHelp, he/she is assigned different user roles. User roles are invented, so that site owners can control who can go where and do what on their platforms. User roles are typically hierarchical. At the top you have a site owner, and below the owner is the site admin and below the admin are all other user roles created. You can create as many as you want roles. For instance you can have: site owner, admin, moderator, seller, buyer, designer, copywriter and so on. Every user role is restricted to certain parts of the website and can do (or not do) specific things on it. Normally when you register to a new website you are assigned the lowest level which is usually a subscriber or a client (buyer). So you can log in and buy stuff on the site - but you can’t sell, you can’t design, you can’t edit stuff. Every user can have more than just one role though. For instance you can be a “buyer” at the beginning, but then when you want to start selling things you are assigned also the “seller” role. So you are already both - buyer and seller. And you have a greater level of access.

Think of user roles as the badges you would get at work. Visitors are usually only allowed to the reception. Customers are also allowed to go upstairs to the office. Workers are allowed in the warehouse. The accountant is not allowed in the warehouse. The technician (all covered in oil) is not allowed upstairs in the office. The big boss is of course allowed to do whatever they please.

I tried to not be too technical with my explanation, but trust me - it’s easy to restrict the access to the forum for specific roles. Users who are only assigned the lowest level of access shouldn’t have access to this forum.

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Please don’t say that she is only partially right. She is actually more right that you are giving her credit for. It is something that several of us, now, have stated in past threads. There are many users right now … ones that are and would be considered creatives that have been CHs before. Some were creatives, then became CHs and were creatives even while running their contests and are now creatives again. There are also creatives that got their start on SH as a CH. There are creatives (sellers – but still known as creatives on SH and SH forum because they’ve never hosted a contest and at any time have capacity and ability to submit to a contest) that actually never participate in contests anymore (and maybe never did, if they were here after the inception of the MP) and only domain. There are people that have and do it all. There are people that are only logo designers, there are people that are only tagliners, there are people that are only namers, and there are people that are only actual creatives and only do contests in general.

The point is, there are thousands of USERS to SH. SH was, as has been explained to you before, originally created as one concept. It has blended and evolved over it’s many years. It has also grown in its many years. Grown not only in popularity but grown in its many uses. While we all want a place for just the creatives and many of us have discussed this in the past, it’s a little more complicated than you may think. Because at any point, anyone can take on or become a new role and/or switch roles at will and need. A lot of SH’s overall growth has been because of this at times. Creatives have seen the benefits, personally, to going off the trust and rapport they have built with SH to then use SH for launching their own contests as they have needed or had the ideas to do such. Contest holders have launched many contests with us and seen the community, spirit, and benefits to becoming a creative or wanting to join in on the fun and creatively diverse environment. Domainers have learned the value of submitting their domains to contests. Creatives have leanred the value and potential at buying domains. Namers have gotten even more creative and wanted to try their hand at tagging or even designing logos. Logo designers have felt creative and wanted to participate in other contest types. The list can go on and on and it does.

Now, because of all the aforementioned transitions and evolutions of user types that people have had and can have in the future at any given time and because SH only wants each user to have only one account, it is hard and would be hard to assign specific roles to users as many as there are and as often as this can change across the entirety of the site. I realize by coding aspects that a solution could be had that would allow users to switch their roles and change their role level within the system somehow that could then trigger only certain aspects to be available and I also realize it would be possible to be an admin function that SH leaders and staff could do as well. The main problem would be how often this would or could happen and how much issue this could create. Also, how often this could change with individual people. Because of this, even if you only made certain areas or abilities available per level or per type … and no matter how this changed … at some time in some cases this type and level would change that would then give access anyhow. So there is no true way to circumvent this unless SH would only allow you to ever be one thing or another and never allow you to be something else. Because at the end of the day, right now, you are allowed to not only participate on SH but you are also allowed to do business through SH in all its different varieties of doing it – so if this is to be continued in any sense … any sort of area or access to areas are granted based on user type, that can and will change if/when you want to do something else. And blocking this would really hinder people and ultimately business through SH. Now I realize this does not happen as often as it may seem via my post … but the point is it has happened and it will happen.

We all, even those of us that have been multiple roles, see the inherent need and use of only having a creative area. We want it. We may like the posts every time it is and will ultimately be mentioned. But that does not mean that it is as easily done as it is said and there would be so many complications and repercussions to it. We wish it could be done and it would solve so many things, but the question then is … what other complications, frustrations, and consequences would this then create?

So, Lisa and others that have discussed this at any length have been describing it right. I just have decided to break it down even further to try to save anyone else the trouble of outlining these concepts and difficulties. This does not mean that you are wrong, but you have to take more aspects, variables, and factors into consideration as I am sure the SH TEAM has been doing for years now every time this has been mentioned. It’s not that it’s entirely impossible to do what you are saying, especially via the route that you are saying, but there are implications – as aforementioned and now stated above in my post – that factors into the impracticality of this. We wish it were possible. It probably is easily possible in some form or another, but there would be difficulties from then forward on how the business model, site model, user model, and abilities therein could and would probably change.

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