Nope. When I banned Parrot (I believe it was for having the same IP as another troll, which confirmed our suspicions that Parrot was a returning troll) I used the regular banning procedure. When I told Parrot that he was banned, I also told him that his password was not well-chosen.
I didn’t start changing passwords on banned people until a couple of days ago, when I noticed that a banned poster had changed his sig. I NEVER change passwords instead of checking the “Allowed to post? NO” button. I sometimes change passwords in addition to checking this button.
TubaDiva is the one who is currently agitating for vBulletin security fixes. Or at least she’s the one who’s doing the most agitating. Other mods are trying to get ISPs to listen to us, and respond to complaints about trolls.
You didn’t change his password, but you locked him out and told him he had a crappy password. Sounds the same to him, wouldn’t it? Did to me when I heard it.
Also, if you cancelled a guy for having the same IP as someone else, you don’t know how IP’s are assigned.
The IP does not record your machine’s number, but the number of your service, or ISP.
Even ISP’s don’t have unique numbers.
In order to “roll out nationwide”, most ISP’s get contracts with intermediaries, who have trunk lines.
No new ISP could ever wait until it had a computer in each area code in the country, could they? No, they buy “wholesale” chunks of time from others, often the local Ma Bell.
Thus it’s your local Ma Bell’s numbers that get passed around. At peak times, things are even rerouted outside the area code to adjoining ones.
It’s like phone service, where not every 1-1-348-then-your-number has to launch its own satellite.
Sounds like you’ve been locking out innocents, all right.
And if you’re hassling their ISPs to drop them, not for doing anything other than getting the same IP number, you really ought to quit.
Why sould someone did lose service based on lame “suspicion of having two names in a chatroom” that in fact was “My chat room mods are not up on how IPs work”.
Show_Biz, those people are not losing service. They’re simply losing the ability to get to this MB (and it is a message board, not a chat room). The SDMB, while nigh omnipotent, cannot have and entire ISP shut down. Can’t do it period. Now we’ve got less than 7500 users-if one of the normal posters, who’s responsible and isn’t a huge whiny pain in the ass or an annoying dickhead, gets locked out of the MB, I’m sure the moderators and administrators will take another look at the situation and decide on a course of action. In the meantime, I’m thinking that keeping a group of people, most of whom have never even heard of the Straight Dope, from accessing the board in hopes of stopping an asshole from bothering us is a deal.
There ya go, I jsut fought a little ignorance for you.
If I ever get three wishes, one will defintely be that I have an Uncle named Beer. Cause damned if he doesn’t sound like he would be fun. Plus always have a cooler full at the ready.
Of course ISPs aren’t locked out of SDMB. Only you would think of such an odd result.
The thing about ISPs, especially free ones, is that they have no staff to study things.
Thus if someone yells “He’s a Spammer!”, they simply drop the guy from their active list. They know he can instantly sign up again, even with the same actual name, as long as he has a new username. That way, the ISP is covered from lawsuits from newspapers who run chat rooms, in case it is a real spammer.
So, I guess the ignorance is back in your court, as usual.
First off, Lynn banned Parrot, and noticed that he had a crappy password in the process. This is substantially different than changing his password to keep him from posting while still making it look like he wasn’t banned. As a matter of fact, the entire point of contention here was that what Lynn did was underhanded and sneaky. What she actually did was nothing of the sort.
As Lynn (or maybe Tuba) has mentioned in another thread about a similar matter which you probably responded to without paying much attention, as is your wont, the mods only check people’s IP addresses when they act like jerks. The chances of two innocent people acting like jerks with the same IP address by coincidence is so remote as to not even be considered. Also, usually ISP’s buy a block of IP addresses from their upstream provider.
I also think that the chances of a couple IP addresses, entirely by chance, being assigned repeatedly to people who act like jerks and get banned from here are not even worth considering. Do you honestly expect there to be twenty different people all over the country expressing the same stupid viewpoints here who all happened to get assigned the same IP address? Parrot deserved the banning without having a sock puppet anyways, as all he ever did was harass other posters.
I’m thinking that a good way to get rid of these people might be to change their passwords and email them the new one. That way, if they use a false email address in their profile, they simply can’t post. Also, if you change the email address in the profile of a banned person as well as change their password, they can’t use the option of retrieving their password.
Oh, and Show_Biz, I’d appreciate it if you’d simply fuck off and die any time now. Thanks.
Did Alpha take that UserName just to irritate Alphagene? I call Alphagene “Alpha” all the time. This is as bad as someone coming is as “Tuba” or “Unc” or “Arnold” or “manny.” This is going to create confusion. And Al is irritible enough already.
Do you think someone would really steal someone else’s name just to piss them off, Uke? You’re so cynical. Alpha, Alphonse, Alphosgene, Al Phosgene, Alpha2Omega, Alpha to Omega: all happy little coincidences, I’m sure.
Show_biz? Alpha? All you need to worry about is that if you piss us off, we ban you, regardless of your precious IP number. Is that so complex? The only people that seem to mind about our treatment of trolls are other trolls.
Sounds like a simple coincidence to me Alpha (-gene, that is). And the similarity of their IP addresses is probably just by chance as well. It could happen, right. Similar names, similar tactics, similar IP addresses, similar registrations dates. Honestly, just change the fuckers’ passwords and email them about it. Wanna take bets as to how many of the email addresses are correct? De facto banning, and it’s their fault for knowingly putting a false email address in their profile.
Damn, I gotta come to the Pit more often. I’m missing all the good stuff, not to mention showing up a day late and a dollar short. Sorry for the bonehead post.
That’s WHY we started looking at Parrot closely. We were watching him anyway, as he just irritating others. Even if he’d had a unique IP, we’d have banned him. It’s just that, from the IP, we are almost certain that it’s one of our old trolls come back to haunt us again. We don’t ban JUST for having the same IP. Cripes, we don’t even check IPs unless someone’s being a jerk.
We’ve turned in a variation of that suggestion to the people at VBulletin. Namely, that if you change your email address, the software generates a new password and emails it to you…so you can’t put in an invalid address and continue to post.
Yeah, Ike ** I ** don’t think anyone would do that ! Why, a person would have to be an ** idiot and a coward ** to steal another person’s user name. And I’m just sure we don’t have any of those here. :rolleyes:
Goddamn, after coming to the SDMB and reading posts in the pit, I’ve stopped watching tv. This is better than any of that shit, without commercials, PLUS I get to interact and post my own additions to the action.