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You have a problem user, named Aragorn. You ban him. Two months later, he makes a new account named Estel. How do you associate his new account with his old acc

by chipsa 3y ago

You have a problem user, named Aragorn. You ban him. Two months later, he makes a new account named Estel. How do you associate his new account with his old account, so you know not to approve it? I've done moderating of an phpBB forum and having the IP address and being able to see who else was posting from that IP address was helpful (because you can look at the writing style and decide they're doing ban evasion).

AshamedCaptain 3y ago
First, for at least this past decade, I have found it impossible that the same user will keep the same IP address for over two months. Storing the IP address _does not help at all_. Second, the new user is subject to approval and all his messages are moderated until a couple of posts. If he starts posting decent material, why would you care he was banned 2 months ago -- are you really that punitative? And if he just posts decent, insightful material for his 5 messages, gets approved and then descends back immediately into trolling, well, at least it's been a couple of months and then the couple of weeks he was under moderation of total silence, plus you have gained whatever contributions he made under moderation. I am yet to see a troll that will repeat this process (which requires insightful contributions in-between each iteration of trolling) for more than a year. That's way less moderating effort that it takes to handle new users at all...
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  IP is still a super valuable info, even as it changes every so often. You'll see strangely repetitive user coming from different AWS's IP blocks. User showing constant sessions from 5 or 6 IP blocks that seem to belong to different countries. Or users having a pretty consitent IP but asks for help right after a new login happened on a different IP. It can be replaced with other info, but it's still a simple and pretty powerful bit to know about your users.

by chipsa 3y ago

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

First, for at least this past decade, I have found it impossible that the same user will keep the same IP address for over two months. Storing the IP address _does not help at all_. Second, the new user is subject to approval and all his messages are moderated until a couple of posts. If he starts posting decent material, why would you care he was banned 2 months ago -- are you really that punitative? And if he just posts decent, insightful material for his 5 messages, gets approved and then descends back immediately into trolling, well, at least it's been a couple of months and then the couple of weeks he was under moderation of total silence, plus you have gained whatever contributions he made under moderation. I am yet to see a troll that will repeat this process (which requires insightful contributions in-between each iteration of trolling) for more than a year. That's way less moderating effort that it takes to handle new users at all...

makeitdouble 3y ago
IP is still a super valuable info, even as it changes every so often. You'll see strangely repetitive user coming from different AWS's IP blocks. User showing constant sessions from 5 or 6 IP blocks that seem to belong to different countries. Or users having a pretty consitent IP but asks for help right after a new login happened on a different IP. It can be replaced with other info, but it's still a simple and pretty powerful bit to know about your users.