Question for Mods: What's involved in banning a Troll?

[Mello_SixtyNine]

The reason I'm asking is because there is a troll that keeps posting the same gifs on my threads and others (Super-Suprise, SEVERUSMAX, etc). He'll get banned, but then shows up again with a new alt & he carpet bombs our threads with the same gifs just to be a troll. Here's a list of his Alts:


Dyslexic
aka Antivirus
aka WrongNumber
aka Discrepancy
aka NavinJohnson
aka JeffDahmer
aka Herbicide
aka allateup
aka CardiacArrest
aka CaseSensitive
aka Conjugal
aka DoNotReply
aka MisterGarrison
aka parodyluvr75
aka GrandpaBill

How can he come back with a new alt so fast and often? I'm not tech savvy when it comes to this IT stuff but don't you block him by his IP address? If not, is there going to be a future update to the site that addresses this kind of shit?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

How? Even if they ban him via his IP, all he has to do is use a VPN that rotates it's IPs. Even if he runs out of IPs on one VPN he can go to another.

The only effective way would be to somehow get his NIC MAC Address, kind of hard to do, and ban him via that. But then again, he just has to get another NIC card. They are pretty cheap nowadays.

Definitions:

VPN - Virtual Private Netword
NIC - Network Interface Card
MAC - Media Access Control

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

How? Even if they ban him via his IP, all he has to do is use a VPN that rotates it's IPs. Even if he runs out of IPs on one VPN he can go to another.

The only effective way would be to somehow get his NIC MAC Address, kind of hard to do, and ban him via that. But then again, he just has to get another NIC card. They are pretty cheap nowadays.

Definitions:

VPN - Virtual Private Netword
NIC - Network Interface Card
MAC - Media Access Control

If that's the case, it would be a nice addition to the site if individuals could moderate threads that they've created. It would solve two problems. First, the mods ineffectiveness at banning someone and second, the ability to scrubs trolls from your threads instantly.

Either that or upgrade the ignore function. Currently, the ignored troll's threads don't show up on the boards but their posts do show up as:

This message is hidden because Insert Troll's name here is on your ignore list.

That doesn't really cut it when your thread is carpetbombed by troll posts gunking up your thread. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

http://i.imgur.com/xF91BH1.png

It would be nice if those would be hidden as well.

 

[sr71plt]

Short answer: the forum mods have nothing to do with banning anybody here.

 

[jehoram]

Short answer: the forum mods have nothing to do with banning anybody here.

I think that's just a suggestion that Mello made. It makes sense to me to allow forum mods to bounce trolls. I know of other forums where they can do just that, so perhaps it's something that Laurel & Co. should investigate.

 

[Nezhul]

You can't prevent people from browsing/registering/posting on your forums unless you enable a moderated registration - which is not gonna happen for lit.

Also adding a feature so that user can moderate the thread he creates will cause more problems than it solves. Not only it's a lot of extra work for the site owners and programmers, it'll also be a bad feature in and on itself, when you think about it.

 

[sr71plt]

I think that's just a suggestion that Mello made. It makes sense to me to allow forum mods to bounce trolls. I know of other forums where they can do just that, so perhaps it's something that Laurel & Co. should investigate.

Suggestion to who? Just spitting in the wind? Laurel and Manu are the only ones who can ban trolls and they don't seem to read the forum much, if at all--with the exception of Laurel, who seems to enjoy playing in the GB playground that has nothing to do with the Web site other than she likes such yammering, apparently. If the OP wants to address the issue to anyone who can do anything about it, maybe the post should be posted in GB instead of here.

Also, Nezhul is right. As the Web site is now set up, you can be banned at 10:00 and be back in under a new account name at 10:02. That's what happens here. We recently had one poster who just added a number to his original account name to come right back in. The last number I remember seeing was 17.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

If the mod update is too difficult, then maybe a smaller fix with the Ignore function would work instead. Currently, If I put someone on ignore, I do not see the threads from those that are on my Ignore list. I do (partly) see the posts that they make on my threads. For example:

http://i.imgur.com/xF91BH1.png

This nimrod (and others) would carpet bomb my threads with these. Maybe, in the next upgrade, these Ignore list posts would not be visible as well.

 

[yukonnights]

I may be wrong, and I'm not fanatical about this thought, But: This Troll thing is a new thing for me since I have been away from Lit for a number of years. It seems to me that there might be organized attempts to attack what Lit stands for in some of these "troll efforts". I see the religious threads which seem to have some coordination, and the spam issue which is intended to generally disrupt what we do here as examples of this. The political stuff seems to be a mix of both honest opinion and organized disruption...maybe even a bit of organized blanket propaganda?

Since this is all uncontrollable, as noted above, I think we should enjoy what we have here while it lasts. I hate to think of this site becoming unusable, but it is probably going to happen at some point

Oh well, back to enjoying what's enjoyable

EDIT TO ADD: The uncontrollable plagiarism of our stories seems to be another chick in the armor of sustainability for the site.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

I may be wrong, and I'm not fanatical about this thought, But: This Troll thing is a new thing for me since I have been away from Lit for a number of years. It seems to me that there might be organized attempts to attack what Lit stands for in some of these "troll efforts". I see the religious threads which seem to have some coordination, and the spam issue which is intended to generally disrupt what we do here as examples of this. The political stuff seems to be a mix of both honest opinion and organized disruption...maybe even a bit of organized blanket propaganda?

Since this is all uncontrollable, as noted above, I think we should enjoy what we have here while it lasts. I hate to think of this site becoming unusable, but it is probably going to happen at some point

Oh well, back to enjoying what's enjoyable

EDIT TO ADD: The uncontrollable plagiarism of our stories seems to be another chick in the armor of sustainability for the site.

A while back, I did a Google search for the stories that I've written and found out that someone had posted them on the XHamster boards. The asshole didn't even bother to change the titles. He had uploaded a bunch of other Lit stories as his own as well. I emailed Xhamster and got them to take my stories down (they didn't take down the other Lit stories for some reason). Then I went to his profile page and replied to everyone on his friend's list that complimented "his stories". Told them that this asshole was a thief and added a link to my stories at Lit. Finally, I went to the other Lit stories he uploaded and commented on each. Wrote that this story was stolen and provided a link to the Lit story.

Just checked his profile...he's still passing off stories as his own.

 

[yukonnights]

I know, it's really a shame and has been mentioned a some other threads; it's impossible to stop. But that's the point; if it's not stopped, along with the "trolls", then I do wonder how long Lit can remain viable? It's not about some monetary loss, but it's still like being violated/robbed

Sadly I don't have any ideas of how to change it, and perhaps this is all just another example of the growing problem of online security/news honesty/scams/spams and such? I guess just ride the pony till it drops

 

[sr71plt]

I know, it's really a shame and has been mentioned a some other threads; it's impossible to stop. But that's the point; if it's not stopped, along with the "trolls", then I do wonder how long Lit can remain viable? It's not about some monetary loss, but it's still like being violated/robbed

Sadly I don't have any ideas of how to change it, and perhaps this is all just another example of the growing problem of online security/news honesty/scams/spams and such? I guess just ride the pony till it drops

I suggest you post your stories to more than one site, if you're not already doing that, because, yes, sites come and go.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If the mod update is too difficult, then maybe a smaller fix with the Ignore function would work instead. Currently, If I put someone on ignore, I do not see the threads from those that are on my Ignore list. I do (partly) see the posts that they make on my threads. For example:

http://i.imgur.com/xF91BH1.png

This nimrod (and others) would carpet bomb my threads with these. Maybe, in the next upgrade, these Ignore list posts would not be visible as well.

If you're using Firefox, you may be able to achieve that at your end with a mod described here: https://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/23573-Greasemonkey-extension-for-Vbulletin-Ignore

(caveat: I have not used this mod myself and can't vouch for it.)

 

[BabblingBrooke]

The reason I'm asking is because there is a troll that keeps posting the same gifs on my threads and others (Super-Suprise, SEVERUSMAX, etc). He'll get banned, but then shows up again with a new alt & he carpet bombs our threads with the same gifs just to be a troll. Here's a list of his Alts:


Dyslexic
aka Antivirus
aka WrongNumber
aka Discrepancy
aka NavinJohnson
aka JeffDahmer
aka Herbicide
aka allateup
aka CardiacArrest
aka CaseSensitive
aka Conjugal
aka DoNotReply
aka MisterGarrison
aka parodyluvr75
aka GrandpaBill

How can he come back with a new alt so fast and often? I'm not tech savvy when it comes to this IT stuff but don't you block him by his IP address? If not, is there going to be a future update to the site that addresses this kind of shit?

I agree with you on the individual behind the majority of these accounts and would like to see a proper banning. However, you have at least one account on your list that does not belong to that troll. Parodyluvr75 is not a "Grandpa Bill" alt. . Do you have something against Birdie? Why would you include her on this list?

IP addresses are easy to change, by the way. It's likely not possible to ban that way. All the person would need to do is post from another device or location, and I'm sure the tech savvy folks don't even need to do that.

 

[ShavedHed]

OP: I'm glad to see you trying to resolve this. I was reading thru the "WTF" thread and saw his pages and pages of spam. I don't think anything will be done about it however.

 

[Primalex]

How can he come back with a new alt so fast and often? I'm not tech savvy when it comes to this IT stuff but don't you block him by his IP address?

IP addresses are not tied to a human, but some endpoint, whatever this might be. Especially mobile users for example can share the same IP address at the same time. I have for example only an IPv6 address and with Stateless NAT64 translations, I might have a different IPv4 address at the same time for different connections.

The only method to ban someone is to either enforce some kind of authentication of the humans involved or to ban the whole IP-range of the service provider, which therefore bans every single customer of this service provider.


Reviewing the threads you have created, I can't see that spam can do any significant damage to the thread contents anyway. My suggestion is to man up.