Another gossip queen has made her entrance.
Although campusNews101.com, a message board that launched Sunday, allows a free-exchange of information among students on Duke's campus, the purpose of the site is different from that of Juicy Campus, site creator Nick Alexander said.
"It's similar because you can post messages," said Alexander, a junior and Chronicle columnist. "But the aim I'm going for is a lot different because it's kind of like craigslist-if you want to carpool, sell a book, just talk about anything else-it's like a forum."
Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director of judicial affairs, said discussions about book sales and men's basketball can be constructive, but other abusive and offensive posts about individuals on the site are disappointing.
When posting on the site, users can opt to include their names, but most have chosen to use aliases.
Alexander added, however, that he retains the right to remove posts from the site-which bars any "libelous material"-if he receives enough requests to do so.
"As the norm emerges on this site, there are legitimate issues being discussed," Bryan said. "If the Web site owner abides by the terms of service or the direction that the site's intended to go, I think that's going to lead to that [intended] result."
Although the opportunity for students to request the removal of posts is a positive step, the site still appears to invite gossip, Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said.
Freshman Mary Ellis, whose name appears on the gossip Web site JuicyCampus.com, said she is not consoled by Alexander's precautions on his site.
"I don't think it's really possible to kind of moderate what's going on the site even though the creator might have better intentions than the Juicy Campus creator did," she said. "It's going to be impossible to keep up with what everyone is saying, and it's going to inevitably turn into Juicy Campus."
She added that she doubts that many users will read the terms of service page.
Junior Sam Iglesias said he thinks campusNews101 will be well-visited if students adhere to the terms of service, but added that "it won't be fun and people will just go for trading textbooks."
"I think that anonymous message boards of this nature just aren't sustainable, simply because truth can so easily get diluted among a sea of really disgusting stuff," Iglesias wrote in an e-mail. "It just takes one really cheesed-off person, possibly with the addition of some willing cohorts, and the site can be brought down in just a few days from a flood of crap. Who do you trust? Who don't you? Worst of all, how can you even know? It's all anonymous!"
Currently campusNews101 is linked via QuickDuke, a Web site created by Alexander and Breck Yunits, Trinity '07, that provides frequently-visited links for Duke students.
Alexander said he developed the idea for campusNews101 when QuickDuke was first developed, but he only began coding for the site, which is currently only available to the Duke campus, recently.
"It also takes about two minutes to set it up for other schools, so it's really streamlined," he added.
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