Reply by Patrick from Community How on Wednesday, 29 February, 2012 - 08:01

Kate, MyBB and similar programs are all very good and have a number of options for controlling privacy. I'd suggest that a chat with the folks that manage social media for headspace.org.au would be a good idea. Obviously they have two concerns, the first is that Facebook uses real names, and the second is that their target audience have serious medical and mental conditions that require delicate handling. Their insight could be invaluable to forming a comprehensive approach to managing privacy on a public forum. In a nutshell the answer is to moderate and monitor, respond quickly to issues and don't be afraid to dragoon trusted members of the community on as moderators to assist. Make sure whatever you use has the option of a nice big button that says 'report this post as spam/abuse/inappropriate'.