Re:Sounds like a good system (Score 2, Informative)

I lived in two of those nice neighborhoods in Colorado Springs in 1998. At the time I was a Java developer for MCI working on their Local Care system. In one house I lived alone, and in the second house I had three hot goth girls as roommates. I'm 6'4" (190cm) tall, have long hair and tattoos, dress in all black w/ combat boots, ride a loud motorcycle, and at the time had a sports car with a loud audio system installed. On two separate occasions the police were dispatched to my house by anonymous tips from the neighbors about drug parties, the manufacture and sale of narcotics, prostitution and other lies. The truth was that I threatened their nice gated community by looking different. On one visit they sent a vice detective with two uniformed officers to ask if I would sign a waiver that would allow them to search my house. I politely declined.

Some neighborhoods have trash that needs to be cleaned up. Some people are just individuals. Anonymizing the reporting system opens it up for abuse and _does_ lend it towards spy-on-your-neighbor big brotherism. What if you see your neighbor smoking something from something that looks like a bong, but he's inside his house when you see him do it? What if you're naive and didn't realize that the "bong" was a vaporizer for asthma relief? I believe that people should be allowed to face their accusers and an online system that encourages reporting of neighborhood faults needs to have protection built in against false reporting. What if the graffiti is on my house, and I like it because I'm into urban art? Control over neighborhood issues isn't a wiki - it's wrong to expect that someone's mistake will be cleaned up by someone else. When one person's mistake is an uninformed retaliation against another person's innocent and legal behavior, the law and society tend to favor the one who made the knee-jerk reaction. Does this mean that more of society is uninformed and they're protecting their own? Or am I truly bad for the homeowner's association because I don't conform to their standard?