Just curious, after reading all those threads from that annoying idiot English guy over at the Pit (as opposed to all the annoying threads started by regulars ;).)
I mean, I understand why you can get BANNED, and will do my best never to be BANNED, but doesn’t the software or the mods or something have a way to stop these pests from posting?
Just a little confused,
Carolyn
Once you’re banned you can’t post .
The Admin. change the poster to banned and then all their posts show banned .
It’s the same with post counts and sigs. Go take a look at some of your other posts. When your post count goes up it changes on all of your posts and when you change your sig. it changes on all your posts that your sig. is showing.
Hope this helps .
In addition, Board members (and, I have no doubt, Administrators) have been wishing for some means to keep people away forever. Some have suggested using ISP numbers, but that’s been shown to be unreliable. We can try contacting the offenders’ service provider, but that would only produce results in especially extreme cases.
So, unfortunately for us, we’ll keep getting annoyed by people who just can’t take a hint, until that day when the Holy Grail is delivered to us… oh, Sir Percival, where are you?
Thanks, Yojimbo and Spoofe. I think I understand. I think that also helps me to understand why somebody will be trumpeting “This is my 10000th post!” when the post count reads 10015 or something.
Carolyn
Is there a way, considering the problems in the pit of late, that the Admins or moderators can stop a jerk like that from even signing up? Like from the IP address or something? Ban in the IP address? Curious.
Because most people do not have static IPs.
Anyone who dials in with a modem is assigned an IP from a pool when they first log on to their ISP. If you ban the IP they are using, what you are banning is anyone who is (randomly) assigned that IP at any future time. The troll can just dial up again to get a new IP, and the people who get blocked are in all likelihood innocent.
Now, you could ban whole domains, but would it really be a smart idea to ban all of AOL from the SDMB because of a few trolls and clowns?
Heeeeeeyyyyy, actually… Admins? Please? For Christmas maybe?
The only real way that I can think of to keep previously banned people away from the site is to micro-manage each and every post.
That, of course, is simply not workable.
Banning by IP or domain won’t work because (a) innocent people will be banned simply because they happen to have been issued a banned IP by their provider, and (b) morphing or spoofing IPs is disgustingly simple…even moreso with the increase in infections by Sub7 and other backdoor trojans.
There are a few tricks that could help reduce (b), but nothing that would work well a majority of the time.
My best advice is for Admin to ban posters as a “statement of unhappiness”, but just don’t expect the poster to stay gone.
As in real life, sometimes you just gotta put up with trouble-makers.
-David
I forgot to include the main thrust of my post.
The best way to keep the boards free of trouble makers is for posters to take the job of policing themselves–let posts that are obviously intended only to cause trouble go by as if it had never been written.
Yeah, I know–sometimes while you’re biting your tongue, you notice that your fingers have been busy, but it really is for the best.
-David
I guess what I wonder is why the threads aren’t just removed.
It seems obvious that the banning process is just a cycle that needs breaking.
If a fellow is banned, he just comes back angrier. But if the posts disappear, that would have to deflate him.
It’s the same principle as painting over grafitti.
The quicker you remove, the less there is.
Ever hear a bunch of Dopers screaming “Censorship”?
Frightening…
-David
I think that’s right but if there is a serious problem a Board Admin could ask the ISP to trace the individual IP and terminate the connection with the ISP. In the end the person will just get bored of setting up new ISP accounts. Apparently co-operation of this kind is not unknown as, in the end, it’s in everyone’s interests.
At least, that’s what I understand can happen
If we required an ISP email address to sign up, we wouldnt have this problem.
I would suggest ban the enrolment of any hotmail, yahoo, or any other anonomous email service. People behave better when you have their home address! 
Hate to spoil your theory, but some of those banned have regular email addresses. Some just started normally, got into a fight with a mod, and then went too far and got banned. Not much way to see that coming.
The other thing, is that a lot of people don’t get pop3 email with a service, especially the $4.95/mo ones. They know email is free everywhere, so they cut costs by not offering it.
If I have to give up my anonymity in such a way kelli, I will be forced to leave the board. It is my anonymity that protects me from those who would try another cyberstalking incident like I’ve already been through. If you are not afraid of this, then you are a much more secure person than I, evidently.
One question to the mods/admins that has never been answered (at least to my knowledge).
Why does all this stuff have to be retroactive. Sometimes a sig line is put there for a particular thread or a phase that we are going through at the moment, a post count might mean something to the thread (“post partys” etc.). Sometimes a simple change of this sort can totally change the meaning of a past thread/post.
Why does a current change have to effect history? Granted, It might mean adding a file or two to the program, but it’s surely not impossable, is it?
If I say something totally stupid on my 10th post, must future generations assume that I said it on my 1000th post, oops, make that 1001…1002…1003. See what I mean?
Surely this change is not beyond the scope of the vendor, which leaves me to think that someone in the higher ranks thinks it’s a good idea to leave things as is. Can that “someone” please explain why?
Sure. Of course it is not impossible. Different programs do things differently. Our last software held the sig “static;” it did not change for prior posts but only for new ones. That particular program did update the post count for all prior posts, as does VBulletin. Both that vendor and our current one say that a static post count file would mean a huge dedication of server resources. If you’ve been hanging around the site for the past couple of days, you will agree that things that tax the server are not a good idea right now.
Why don’t we beat up the vendors to change things? A couple of reasons. First, the software is like $200 bucks. For that meager price, we already get an enormous amount of customization, for which we are grateful. Second, we have to set priorities. There are still bugs in this program, and there are some important back-end features that could be improved. Candidly, post counts and sig functions are pretty far down the to-do list.
For sigs, you can of course insert one manually in the body of your post – you need not use the sig function. That would take care of the special occasion(s) for which a sig might be appropriate. For the post counts, everyone pretty much has learned to adjust.
Hope this helps.