posted
So heres the deal. I run a web forum for my fellow Skidmore students on my server. Its a simple phpbb 2.0.20 forum that only has about 30 users right now. Recently we managed to pick up a whopper of a troll. I'm not quite sure how he found us, but he's taken up residence and doesn't seem to want to leave. He's also very good. He seems to have an endless supply of proxies so ban doesn't work, is unphased by post and account deletions, got around the phpbb antitroll hack that uses cookies to make trolls lives miserable (took him a day but he figured it out) and has started harrassing our users through AIM. I'm at my wits end and seriously annoyed. I have no idea what he has against us or why he'd want to pester little old us, but he won't go away and short of admin account activation and making all the forum's private I'm out of ways to get rid of him. And I really don't want to do either of those.
Anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of him? He is unashamedly a troll (his first SN was Super_Troll and since then he's gone through a number of them all rather rude and crude and unabashedly trolling). Has hatrack ever had any of these? How'd you get rid of them?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I'd appreciate it if no Hatrack members use this thread to identify which other members they believe to be trolls. Thank you.
As to the original question, the only really persistent trolling that happened at Hatrack was in the Young Writers Forum, and the Cards removed the forum. I don't think that's the solution you're looking for.
Posts: 441 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:I use the same software, and I've found the account email activation to be painless.
I don't know why you don't do that.
Becuase I wouldn't put it past this guy to go register a million different e-mail addresses on Yahoo and I don't know how to restrict it to Skidmore.edu e-mails... I suppose I could just ban every e-mail site that's none skidmore.edu...
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
If I understand account activation correctly, you could just approve the ones you believe to be real. And what I've done for my yahoo groups is email anyone who requests to join, if they don't reply, they don't get in. That way you can still let in people who use yahoo addresses if they are legit.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I don't think that mine was funnier--it just built on yours. You said he was a troll. Trolls are usually depicted as being massive brutes. In D&D, kobalds are relatively small, relatively puny monsterous race. It's common for DMs to throw lots of kobalds at low level parties, since they're an enemy that even 1st level player characters can take on and survive. Since Superstation is still relatively small, that was the monster I went with.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Ok, I found some mods to do exactly this for me. I installed them and they seem to be working. I fixed up e-mail account activation and that is working too. If this doesn't keep him out...
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Also, if it's at all possible in the format, place a mandatory delay between the registration of an account and the time where a new user is allowed to post. Many wise (or burnt) forums make it so that you have to wait a set amount of time before your new account is allowed to post (a week or so, usually).
Combine this with a secret 'trial period' of posting (where entries have to be approved for the first X days), and you've got a pretty good low-maintenance buffer against trolling ad nauseum.
In the meantime, supplant your e-bastion by making casual offhand reference to the peculiarity of someone wanting to expend so much effort just to scum up a forum.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
If he has a school email address, it'd be really easy to track him down and beat the ever living crap out of him.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: If he has a school email address, it'd be really easy to track him down and beat the ever living crap out of him.
This is typically my favorite solution to problems. Real world vengeance for internet abuses tends to discourage repeat offenses.
Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote: quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: If he has a school email address, it'd be really easy to track him down and beat the ever living crap out of him.
This is typically my favorite solution to problems. Real world vengeance for internet abuses tends to discourage repeat offenses.
It would be nice, but he doesn't. I don't think he's from Skidmore. But if he does, then you can bet I'll be tracking him down and beating the everlivin crap out of him... and then some.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
I sent a troll on saturday at 10am... it didn't arrive till yesterday... WHY???
This Troll is not a dump truck people.
Have you tried contacting the internet police?
I am serious about this, I mean, why not call your ISP and get some technical wizards to find this guy and like, snuff him out or something. I don't know how messy you want to get. I could make a few calls...
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I think we'd better not mention to Sen. Tubes that the internet has trolls. He might think they're a threat to national security and shut down the internet.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
We had a huge problem here with Trolls a couple of years back. Registration was shut down for months.
There were a couple of benefits. When registration came back up again we got a lot of really awesome newbies who'd been waiting around for months to get on. Also, IMHO, the hatrack community got a lot stronger.
Of course, we were getting some new blood by giving screennames that hatrackers had registered and never used to people we could verify weren't trolls, so we weren't completely stagnant.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Alcon, glad you found a solution that seemed to be working.
I was wondering if there was a way to have an administrative "ignore" function. Basically, could you set it up so that the troll can see all posts, but nobody can see his posts?
He'd figure it out if he had other IDs, of course, but you'd also know if those IDs were his if he ever mentioned things like "hey, where's <insert trollname>'s posts?"
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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