Restricting your forum audience to male or females only

[Beverly]

Would you ever create a forum which was specifically restricted to only males or females? For instance, maybe you have a womens body building forum and only allow women to register and post. The forum might not just be restricted to a specific gender, but also a group of people. So you might have dad's work at home forum that caters just to men who are working at home to be around their children. Or, a pregnancy site for just older women. What do you think of this idea?

 

[buysell-browse.com]

Strictly from a technical standpoint, such restrictions would be hard to enforce. On the Internet, you can pretend to be whatever you like. So in your example, the same person could be a stay-at-home dad on one forum, and an expecting mom on another. How can you check?

 

[ForumSource]

I don't think there's anything wrong with it, it would ultimately be up to the owner as it may be hard to just target one gender specifically.

 

[Mikaya]

Strictly from a technical standpoint, such restrictions would be hard to enforce. On the Internet, you can pretend to be whatever you like. So in your example, the same person could be a stay-at-home dad on one forum, and an expecting mom on another. How can you check?

This. I don't think this aim is very realistic. Unless you got some really good thought-out effective systems in place.

 

[Atrox]

I'm certain that it would almost be impossible to enforce these rules, as buysell-browse.com said you can pretend to be whatever you like. And even if you requested a picture they can easily search through Google Images. 😛

 

[The Governor]

Unless the forum's host specifically states administrators cannot impose such restrictions, the administration can do whatever they want. If they want to restrict the registrations of people with an 'a' in their name they can.

I, however, find it extremely stupid to limit your audience simply because of gender, or in extreme cases, race. As was pointed out by [user]buysell-browse.com[/user], anyone can easily lie on the internet about their gender, age, etc. So even if there was a "female only" board, how would this even be enforced? It couldn't.

 

[Tuzo]

People can always lie about their gender so of you were to only allow females, it probably would all be just females.

 

[CM30]

I wouldn't do this. Seems like a potential legal hassle waiting to happen (and as said, it's too easy to lie to get past this sort of stuff).

 

[Migi]

To me, the main problem about this situation is that we can hardly verify the gender of the account. It is very easy to lie, and whatever attempt to protect the content from specific gender could be easily leaked out. The idea is actually quite interesting, to give a space for specific discussions where people may be able to talk more openly. Unfortunately, with online communities and accounts, it is actually hard to protect some kind of secret.

I would not make one forum so specific, but if I were to have a general discussion forum for example I could try to make a section with certain requirements. Need to be extra careful with the system, though.

 

[Soapbox]

A target audience can be a big bonus. It's not what I opted for, but discussion sites targeting a specific demographic have the advantage of purpose & definition. Keeping those that are NOT the target audience out, is almost impossible as was said before. But hey why would you want to bar users? Users are users!