I’ve considered that as well, but I also trust that people here are adults and can acknowledge that this is not a private forum. Resources like that are best available for whoever needs it, regardless of trust level. It’s a bit of a tap dance, but I think that if you need that resource and acknowledge that it is not private, a post can always be deleted and that sometimes just getting it out is what’s important.
Mostly I’m concerned that there is less of a merit to giving a private public area where things like talking about specific people can be accomplished, and I wouldn’t encourage that specifically any more than I would encourage publicly discussing specific individuals.
Discussing problem behaviors is applicable to everyone and I think that in general, most people don’t need a username or a specific person to understand the focus of the discussion, so it’s probably better for us to learn and utilize discretion rather than creating a nest for inside discussions.
Also, I try not to link that thread very much because first off, it’s right in my profile and my profile gets viewed pretty frequently for whatever reason so I think it’s easy enough to find if you need it, and also that most of the people who have been here for a while or have posted in and visited that topic already know that it exists as a resource and either use it when they need it or visit for a feeling of solidarity.
I know we want to protect everyone as much as possible, but walling up a resource and saying we must trust you this much to use it is probably also going to be harmful in a different way, because there are quite a few members of whom I do not have any trust or regard for who have achieved a “membership” level of trust on this forum, so what we’re really talking about is should we trust a new account period rather than should we guard the information for the greater good.
My post previously about not wanting to allow the bad apples to impact our treatment of the good ones is frustratingly centered around this concept, where it is arguably a risk that we must take if we are to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Whether the benefit of the doubt should be given is probably another discussion altogether, however while I am very cautious about this, I do believe in a reluctantly optimistic way that if this forum had not been somewhat open to new people despite the auspicious simultaneous disappearance of all prior meme posters upon my arrival, that I would not have found a place here if others had put the memes thread (for example) behind a paywall of trust.
Just saying that watching for warning signs is a given but creating a screening process for the benefit of sensitive eyes hurts more than just the offenders and the offended, it also impacts those who might be struggling and not always have a way to fit directly in.
There are people here who have been liking posts and reading topics since 2013 and have made 0 or 1 post in that entire time, so there are many silent members of the community and I don’t know if there should be more or less trust for them than there is for the obnoxious new person who is angry that they spent $2000 on something they perceive not to work and then want to direct that feeling at anyone who will listen, even the person who is trying to help them make it work.
My point is not that you’re wrong to be cautious, it’s that we should trust that people can be cautious on their own and that we should be mindful of what we talk about, where and with whom. This type of discussion which we’re having in Fin’s complaining topic could really happen in a chat or a message, but we don’t like to feel limited to that and we aren’t necessarily hiding our feelings when we put them here, so it’s probably better to have it that public discussions are indeed public to encourage that there is no degradation of the conversation in member only areas rather than to use the sensitive nature of previous discussions as a reason to partition the community.
Again, I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but the same as how I don’t link the roll call thread in public places of discussion, it’s a 1 click private topic. If you click on my profile, it’s the highest topic on the list of topics which I’ve created, so it’s not inaccessible but it’s also not stickied on the top of the forum. I know that people who post in that topic are aware that others can view it, and in that way, I think that when someone makes a choice to post there, it’s because they need that acknowledgement to vent a little bit or be freed of things they perhaps can’t discuss with people IRL.
Hopefully I haven’t explained this into the ground, but I don’t like to just shoot down ideas without at least explaining myself first.
but you’re definitely wrong 
” and the “dear diary today I found 300 irrelevant youtube videos that I’ll share just because 
” was really troll behavior imo, and I don’t think there’s need to defend or feel bad for every troll on the internet.