[Scummvm-devel] User control on ScummVM forums

[Max Horn]

Am 31.12.2005 um 23:33 schrieb Travis Howell:

> From: "Max Horn" <max at quendi.de>
>> Banning users is an extreme measure, and solves little. It's  
>> really simple to evade a ban. If we need a dozen people with ban  
>> rights to  keep ahead of the accounts which need to be banned,  
>> then we should  consider closing the forum down partially. I.e. no  
>> automatic account  approval anymore -- make an admin review and  
>> approve every new account.
>
>
> We should have more moderators able to ban users on the forums, so  
> we can act quickly when user(s) are causing major problems. Some  
> people can cause trouble for fun, some get angry our disputes and  
> spam to forums can easily get out of hand, if not controlled.

Yeah, so what... you have to keep banning users, who simply register  
again, so you have to ban them again, etc. How is that better than  
having to delete lots of messages? OK, so they need a second address  
but..

Hey, if *I* wanted to annoy us, I'd just write a bot which creates a  
couple hundred posts before you can say "boo". And then another, with  
one of the fifty email addresses I registered... :-).

These are all hypothetical scenarios anyway. If either happens, we  
are screwed anyway, just like we are screwed if somebody decides to  
run a DDOS attack on us...

Anyway, I don't mind if more people can ban, I just don't think that  
it's as helpful as you and Eugene seem to think it is (based on my  
impression)...


> If no one is around who can ban users, we could end up in a  
> situation of a flood of messages on forums, which moderators can  
> only delete in the meantime.

Well, I look every other day at the forums. And immediately when I  
get an email telling me it's urgent... I

> How exactly will an admin review of new accounts help? it would  
> just cause a delay for new accounts and annoy users wanting to post  
> reponses. It is easy to get a free email address and falsify the  
> account details.

True. It just makes it a bit more annoying to register 50 new spam  
accounts in a row. But yeah, it doesn't really solve the issue. Just  
like banning won't solve it :-)

>
>> Actually, I just checked, and I do *not* see new "flames" from  
>> dogmanscreek. Only the already locked down threads we saw earlier.  
>> He posted nothing since then.
>
> Because I deleted the posts and topics as soon as they were  
> mentioned on our IRC channel. Doesn't the message board keep a log  
> of changes to posts and topics? anyway if you really want to see, I  
> posted a sample I had left in my cache at http:// 
> members.optusnet.com.au/scummvm/misc/sample.png

Well that's a problem then. I am not aware of a log of posts. And if  
you immediately delete them, then this also means you removed all  
"proofs" for wrongdoings of a certain person.

Maybe it's possible to create an admin-only hidden forum where  
offensive messages are moved to (instead of deleting them), so that  
(a) all admins can see the offenses of a given user and (b) we later  
have hard facts showing clearly why we felt necessary to ban a  
certain user (really helps when you have some clever guys who post a  
slashdot story about how those evil ScummVM guys banned him from  
their forums w/o any good reason... :-)

>
>> There is a chance that he'll just shut up and wander off if  
>> ignore.  If OTOH we ban him now, this may very well lead to a tag- 
>> game style "I-flame-you-ban-let's-see-who's-quicker" game...
>
> Yes, or he could just keep posting more flames every so often,  
> until he is banned.

Well, I didn't know he posted more... how should I know, since nobody  
said it and you simply deleted all "problematic" messages... :-/

I've banned him now.


Bye,
Max