Do you report spam and troll threads?

wegs

wegs

Matter and Pixie Dust
Valued Senior Member
Sometimes, trolls can be subtle in their expression, but there are very obvious ones, including those who seem to be masquerading under another account, but he/she is actually banned. To all: Do you report such threads?

I think if a banned member creates an alternative account, that IP address should be banned. Just my opinion.
 
Mine too.Why don't you report them?

Not sure if you can just ban the IP address though since I thought it could be shared .

From other forums I think the mods can use automatic software to weed out some "users" but I am unfamiliar with the process.
 
geordief said:
Mine too.Why don't you report them?
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I usually do.

Not sure if you can just ban the IP address though since I thought it could be shared .

From other forums I think the mods can use automatic software to weed out some "users" but I am unfamiliar with the process.
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Yea, I used to belong to a site that had a way to weed out banned users attempts at posting on the forum under various “aliases.” I don’t see it as a big problem here but there are one or two who seem to be repeat offenders.
 
wegs said:
I think if a banned member creates an alternative account, that IP address should be banned.
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What we would do is ban just the username, if the person started to create sock puppets we'd ban that IP. That way we wouldn't accidentally ban everyone posting from a public computer in a library (for example.) And even that's not foolproof - you can still get around an IP ban by moving computers (or spoofing your IP address, which isn't that hard.)
 
It takes some sophistication to track down sock puppets. IP address is one aspect, but you can't just ban an IP address.

My philosophy re: members is to have as short a memory as possible. Even if I've had quarrels with others, I try not to bring that with me. In other words, I will try to engage in a sincere discussion sincerely, until there's a reason to do otherwise. For a handful of members, that reason shows up a lot sooner. There are a few who have pretty much thrown any possible good-faith discussion out the window.

I report threads that violate the rules. I don't go looking for socks. And frankly don't much care if they are, as long as they behave this time around.
 
billvon said:
What we would do is ban just the username, if the person started to create sock puppets we'd ban that IP. That way we wouldn't accidentally ban everyone posting from a public computer in a library (for example.) And even that's not foolproof - you can still get around an IP ban by moving computers (or spoofing your IP address, which isn't that hard.)
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Who’s we? Lol
 
DaveC426913 said:
It takes some sophistication to track down sock puppets. IP address is one aspect, but you can't just ban an IP address.

My philosophy re: members is to have as short a memory as possible. Even if I've had quarrels with others, I try not to bring that with me. In other words, I will try to engage in a sincere discussion sincerely, until there's a reason to do otherwise. For a handful of members, that reason shows up a lot sooner. There are a few who have pretty much thrown any possible good-faith discussion out the window.

I report threads that violate the rules. I don't go looking for socks. And frankly don't much care if they are, as long as they behave this time around.
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No one is “looking for socks,” I’m speaking of pretty obvious trolls, and spammers. (They could be a sock puppet but not always)
 
I can't imagine an interesting spam. The faster they're cleaned up, the better.
Trolls are a very different matter. I've seen people called trolls just because they were annoying, or had one limited area of interest, or represented a point of view that wasn't popular. And I've seen trolls get away with some bad behaviour, just because they were a little more canny.
As a mod, I've been involved in serious discussions over whether to warn, suspend or ban a user - mods generally do not take their duty lightly. It's the hat, y'know? Like jury duty: flibbertigibbets and ne'erdowells are transformed into upstanding citizens when they're sworn in.
The IP address thing is problematic. Eg: I share a work environment with five other computers on the same network, and I have no idea what webbenigans the others get up to. I've had amazon delete several of my book reviews because one of the other people in my group read the same book. (We're in the publishing business.)
 
IPs bans are problematic since lots of people post from IP addresses owned by ISPs that assign addresses from a large public pool. You wouldn't want to be banned just because a troll happens to share the same ISP with you.

We do have some IP bans in place relating to certain ISPs that seem to do nothing to control spammers using their platform.

Trolling can be a tricky thing to police because it is more often than not constructed intentionally to pass as legitimate posting. Personally, I try to err on the side of not jumping to conclusions about a poster's apparent intent in posting something, but over time a pattern of posting can build up in a single thread or across several threads. Some trolling is more obvious than other trolling.

There tends to be a lot of debate among the moderators as to whether particular posts or series of posts constitute trolling. As a general rule, if a few of those debates occur regarding the same poster, it becomes more likely over time that we will settle on a consensus opinion that the person concerned is actually trolling.

I guess the bottom line is that it's possible to get away with a certain amount of trolling, for a while. We could go hard line, but then innocent parties would most likely be caught in the net.
 
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