note to contributors - perils of open blog

flowers of sulfur , an open poetry blog that i have belonged to for a while - and which inspired me to start this blog, has apparently - apparently, there is still some question as to what happened - been hacked by a disgruntled member. many of the contributors to flashing by are also contributors to fos and will be aware of what happened. others can get an idea by looking at the comments section of the most recent post on flowers of sulfur - or can e-mail me. the bottom line is that this has exposed something i have always had in the back of my mind - the extreme fragility of an open blog, especially one where all or most of the members have "administrative privileges." basically, anybody with "privileges" can do anything to anybody else's posts - alter or deface them or delete them, also do anything to the layout of the blog itself. a war could break out with members going back and forth over each other's posts. you just kind of assume that nobody is actually going to do this. the advantages to everybody having privileges are that : a) members can invite new members - but nobody but myself seems to be doing this anyway b) members could use the sidebar to promote their projects - but this can also be done by posting c) it makes collaboration between members on individual posts much easier - without it collaboration would have to be done offsite with one member posting - but in practice this is mostly what is being done already so - at the urging of some contributors - i have removed the privileges of all except myself and a few other "original gangstas". any questions please feel free to e-mail me. rpenmarq at gmail dot com rhoda penmarq