Maybe this will help. Interesting link there, PC. Thanks.
[FONT size=1]Jan 18 2007[/FONT] [FONT face=Verdana size=2] A popular Vancouver message board riddled with racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments will continue to exist, say the owners of the tourism-oriented website that hosts it, until they can find the time to clean it up. DiscoverVancouver.com bills itself as "an online guide" to Vancouver that points tourists toward accommodations, entertainment, restaurants and nightclubs, and it invites users to visit the message board if they have any questions about the city. However, the message board has primarily been used by locals, and contains a number of offensive postings against ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals. For example, a thread titled 'First Nations chicks?' includes an entry by the poster 'nathanchange,' who, in September 2006, offered the following advice for soliciting native women: "Go down to East Hastings with a gallon bucket of paint thinner and/or 92 octane Gasoline. Offer free samples. Done deal." The same thread featured a number of additional racist remarks — none of which have been deleted — which depict native women as poverty-striken drug addicts. DiscoverVancouver.com is owned by MyZone Media, which also owns ClubZone.com, TechVibes.com and CasinoZone.com. Mike Schwarz, president of ClubZone.com, says he realizes the message board does not paint a good impression of Vancouver for tourists, but the company has had to put off cleaning up the site due to the growth of ClubZone.com. There are 13 moderators that scan through DiscoverVancouver.com and delete controversial postings, but because there can be as many as 6,000 new postings in a single day, many become buried in the site. "We definitely know there's a lot of inflammatory information on there, and we're by no means at all condoning racism or things like that," says Schwarz, "but, at the same time, from a media perspective, controversy is always good, and so when you have people going on there slamming a local retailer who hasn't been holding up their refund policy... it sort of exposes truth." Schwarz says MyZone Media receives approximately one letter a week from a lawyer threatening to sue because of a comment made on the message board. However, he insists that if there is ever a legal discrepancy, the company immediately pulls the posting. Schwarz adds that DiscoverVancouver.com works with the Vancouver Police Department in finding pedophiles who have posted child pornography on the site, and also in preventing suicides; he claims that the strategy has led to a number of arrests and the prevention of at least one suicide. Schwarz also notes that the message board will eventually follow the ClubZone.com format, which will require users to log in before posting. However, that won't be lauched for another six months.
Sean Condon[FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3] [/FONT]
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