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Unfortunately, some of them are just too persitent, and come back. It's like whack a mole: different IPs all over a geographic region. It's hard banning library

Unfortunately, some of them are just too persitent, and come back. It's like whack a mole: different IPs all over a geographic region. It's hard banning library IPs, because you shut yourself off to a large group. They may keep coming back, but often they're very easy to spot :)

weeksie 16y ago
I never said there weren't outliers, but I have found them to be quite rare since using this strategy. If I do have to ban someone like that I ban them by email address, since I require email confirmation to sign up. It slows them down at least. Also, I can ban by regex on an email address so they can't use the gmail trick of adding a + after their username. I find it just as effective as an IP ban and less likely to affect others.
- zaphar 16y ago
  This is somewhat offtopic but the plus is actually a defacto standard in most mailers. I believe but can't say for certain that sendmail was the first to ignore everything after the plus in the local-part of the address and most other mailers do the same.
- rimantas 16y ago
  You can also put dots at arbitrary places in your gmail username i.e. jhonsmith@gmail com, jhonsmith@gmail com and jhon.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com is the same email address.
VMG 16y ago
You could also display another version to the troll than to other users where the troll sees the forum as if his posts are successfully submitted while the rest doesn't see the postings.
- joemi 16y ago
  I'm really intrigued by this idea... Does anyone know of anywhere that's actually tried this?
  - EliAndrewC 16y ago
    They do this on the SomethingAwful forums, it's referred to as hellbanning, though I'm not sure if the term originated there: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban
    - paragraft 16y ago
      They were later removed because they cause difficulties in performance optimization. They're hard to implement consistently and correctly (i.e, so things like post counts for each thread etc add up correctly for the hellbanned user) without blowing performance out of the water for the general case.

weeksie 16y ago

I never said there weren't outliers, but I have found them to be quite rare since using this strategy. If I do have to ban someone like that I ban them by email address, since I require email confirmation to sign up. It slows them down at least. Also, I can ban by regex on an email address so they can't use the gmail trick of adding a + after their username. I find it just as effective as an IP ban and less likely to affect others.

zaphar 16y ago
This is somewhat offtopic but the plus is actually a defacto standard in most mailers. I believe but can't say for certain that sendmail was the first to ignore everything after the plus in the local-part of the address and most other mailers do the same.
rimantas 16y ago
You can also put dots at arbitrary places in your gmail username i.e. jhonsmith@gmail com, jhonsmith@gmail com and jhon.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com is the same email address.

VMG 16y ago

You could also display another version to the troll than to other users where the troll sees the forum as if his posts are successfully submitted while the rest doesn't see the postings.

joemi 16y ago
I'm really intrigued by this idea... Does anyone know of anywhere that's actually tried this?
- EliAndrewC 16y ago
  They do this on the SomethingAwful forums, it's referred to as hellbanning, though I'm not sure if the term originated there: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban
  - paragraft 16y ago
    They were later removed because they cause difficulties in performance optimization. They're hard to implement consistently and correctly (i.e, so things like post counts for each thread etc add up correctly for the hellbanned user) without blowing performance out of the water for the general case.