7 ms·
This reminds me of the old VBulletin plugin "Miserable Users"[0]. We also had a community suffering from this problem (during the early 2000's). Bans would tak
by anw 7y ago
This reminds me of the old VBulletin plugin "Miserable Users"[0].
We also had a community suffering from this problem (during the early 2000's). Bans would take care of a lot of problem users, but would just give energy to those truly out for blood, troll, bored, or very immature.
We had one user get banned over a dozen times while we tried banning IPs, name regex or anything else we could think of. Finally, like you, we found that if we annoy them first, they get bored and shuffle off to some other, lower barrier place.
Some of the nice features from that plugin (via the site) were:
1. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).
2. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).
3. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).
4. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage by default).
5. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).
6. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).
7. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper page.
* [0] https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258 https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258
- cbd7f73 7y agoThis sounds pretty terrible when you think about how arbitrarily websites can determine you're a "bad user", but then again I like the idea of doing this programmatically for sites I myself want to stop using. Either that or a plugin to encourage productivity. Don't block social media sites, just turn them all into slow ineffective shitty websites.
- 300bps 7y agoIf you don't already, you should browse HN with ShowDead turned on. There are people who have been banned for years and blissfully post comments several times per week completely unaware that almost nobody is seeing their comments. Often, the comments they're posting into the black hole are indicative of why they were banned in the first place but if I see a comment that is dead and it does add to the conversation then I vouch for it which un-deads it.
- kcvv 7y agoHow do you turn on the ShowDead settings? I don't see that in my settings page..
- adrianN 7y agoI browse HN with showdead. I encounter very few hidden comments and I regularly vouch for comments by new accounts that were apparently caught in some kind of spam filter.
- baddox 7y agoI just checked, and I have ShowDead on, so I must have had it on for a rather long time since I don’t at all remember hearing about it or turning it on. I also don’t recall seeing a dead comment, or perhaps I don’t know how to identify them.
- elbear 7y ago
- hinkley 7y agoKinda reminiscent of advice I’ve overheard for breaking up with a narcissist: make them break up with you by being boring.
- oska 7y agoThis is the 'Grey Rock' strategy: > So, how do we escape this parasitical leech without triggering his vindictive rage? Gray Rock is primarily a way of encouraging a psychopath, a stalker or other emotionally unbalanced person, to lose interest in you. It differs from No Contact in that you don’t overtly try to avoid contact with these emotional vampires. Instead, you allow contact but only give boring, monotonous responses so that the parasite must go elsewhere for his supply of drama. When contact with you is consistently unsatisfying for the psychopath, his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama. Psychopaths are addicted to drama and they can’t stand to be bored. With time, he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself drawn to you less and less often. Eventually, they just slither away to greener pastures. Gray Rock is a way of training the psychopath to view you as an unsatisfying pursuit you bore him and he can’t stand boredom. https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-with-psychopaths/ https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-with-p...
- jdc 7y agoSounds effective, but I wonder where the author got that definition of "psychopath".
- oska 7y agoYes, agree that using the word 'narcissist' instead would have been better. Psychopaths don't necessarily feed on drama or crave attention.
- kubanczyk 7y agoThe author was concerned with true psychopaths (in the clinical sense), but I guess this timid tactic is as usable towards the narcissistic types.
- aweiland 7y agoThis brings back memories. I loaded this plugin as well to deal with some problem users.