it COULD be setting yourself up for a lawsuit. nothing you do on the internet is 100% anonymous. especially if you post their names, addresses, and/or contact info. you MAY be okay if block out their faces and address and do not give any contact info for them. but if you post THEIR information on the web, or make comments about how they are breaking the law, YOU may be sued for slander, libel, and any number fo other things the lawyers can come up with.

your best bet to handle the locals is to video tape them and their dogs. then hand that over.

People like that won't care. Ever. And I don't think they can be shamed into changing their behavior, although I certainly wish... Noble for trying and maybe it will effect a few, so go for it.

There is nothing they can do.
Sure there is.

I live in a city/urban 'hood and we occasionally get newbies who are unfamiliar with scoop-de-poop laws. If asking the neighbors nicely to obey the law doesn't work, we video tape the incident and forward it to our police precinct, along with the address of the offender. This is a criminal offense, so we don't even bother calling animal control.

A front door visit by a uniformed officer is probably enough to scare your lazy neighbors into doing the right thing. And I will bet you a beer those dogs don't have a valid license either.

I think it is a decent enough idea. If you simply publish pictures taken in a public venue and make no accusations, there should be no way anyone could claim slander. They might try, however, meaning you would have the added cost/aggrivation of the legal costs.

(This might be the first time we agree, QQ---mark it on a calendar!!!)

I like the idea, but as mentioned before be careful about it backfiring and getting you in trouble. I'm sure someone could figure out how to successfully sue you, or at least make it expensive to defend yourself against a lawsuit.

Yes, I would use a site like that, especially if repeated calls to Animal Control or police were useless. I think it's a good idea.

So where's the URL?

It would be very therapeutic for those of us who deal with this type of thing. The folks who are not responsible for their dogs won't give a hoot. They hide behind the rationalization of giving their dogs freedom and fresh air and probably think those of us who leash walk our dogs are abusing them by keeping them in captivity.

Go for it Quirky, it would be highly entertaining. Do include room for 'comments' on each case from those of us who will visit the site.

Well, make sure when you register the domain name that you do it as a private registration (i.e. hiding the whois information, thereby making it somewhat difficult to track down who owns the website). It costs a little more, but in a situation like this, it would be worth it. That way, if someone does decide to sue you, they have to put a little more effort into it (presumably by contacting your webhost, and demanding your personal information. Which the webhost should not give up without a subpeona from the suing person's lawyer.) You'll also want to make sure that you find a host that isn't going to dump you at the first complaint (which is far, far too common), so you may want to check out some of these here.

I'd also make sure that you review any submissions/cases to the site from other people before validating them, to ensure that there are not any identifying pieces of information, as davidandkasie said before. Faces should be blacked out, and no full addresses -- that's the definite road to getting sued.

If you do this, you really ought to do it as a dynamic site (in php, asp, etc with a database) so that people can automatically submit things, you can quickly validate them, and people can leave comments, etc. I really hate rinky-dink websites where you have to submit content through email. It's horrendously time-consuming for the webmaster, and frustrating for the submitters to wait for their content to go up.

Nothing better to do with your time? You are setting yourself up for a lawsuit!

Other than posting peoples personal information I think it is a great idea. Rottenneighbor.com is a site where you can click on your neighbors home and post good or bad things about them. Also youtube.com is a pretty popular site for leaving videos.

Let us know if you get that going- i'd be happy to post my irresponsible pet owning neighbors.

If a site like that posted only pictures and public information---pictures taken from a sidewalk/streetneighbors yard----and added the address and the offenders name---how is a person going to win a lawsuit? That information is public domain---no different from a television camera filming for a news report.

Pictures are very powerful evidence for mistreatment---animal rescue groups do that all the time---as do animal cruelty legal organizations.

As long as the website did not make claims that were personal opinions about the character of the offenders---they will not be able to win a suit. They could always sue anyway---which amounts to a nuisance suit in the end. The website could always turn the pictures over to the police/animal cruelty folks---and let them handle the cases.

How about taking photos of the offense, then blowing up the pictures and posting them around the neighborhood. You can write the address of the offender on the top of the photo along with a tag-line like "Animal Cruelty - shame on you!" That way it is completely anonymous (as long as no one sees you hanging up the photo) and gets your point across.

Handymac, from my recollection, we agree on just about everything ((eventually.))

"How about taking photos of the offense, then blowing up the pictures and posting them around the neighborhood."
Actually I did this once. I posted a sign up on the main stop sign of the neighborhood that everyone has to look at that said "the stinky poo in your yard is courtesy the residents of ...(address)"
But the sign didn't stay up more than 30 minutes or so. Great minds think alike.

Like cynthia said, this would be more so therapeutic for people who feel helpless to do anything about what is going on. It might seem like good revenge to make these people feel equally as helpless to remove these "complaints" posted about them. But maybe the focus should be shifted more to education. Intead of making the people feel like losers, maybe some other approach would be more effective at getting them to make changes which is ultimately what we want. We obviously don't want to make enemies anymore than we don't want dogs to be neglected.