Proxies

[Arani]

Hmm, this does sound like an idea, and i'm personally fine with it. But i don't know anything about proxies and such so i'm not the best judge, but it could work.

[Moka]

I'm saying that if an account acts suspicious, check the IPs, compare them and their traceable origin, and ban if it points to an obvious proxy.

We already do this.

I would like to mention that is very easy to attack a forum without the use of a proxy. All you need to do is get off your butt and go to your nearest cafe, library, university, and use their free, public internet.

I do not want to have an absurdly tall wall of defense that new members have to climb in order to join this forum. At some point we need to draw the line between defense and how welcoming we are to new members. I believe that line is drawn where it needs to be drawn right now. New members shouldn't need to suffer an untrusting initial atmosphere just because we can't handle a few spam PM's once in a while.

[Regulus]

Seriously, that is almost exactly what we do. The only exception is that we don't ban anyone if they use a proxy. We do, however, keep a close eye on accounts which are suspicious, as Woeler pointed out. And yes, it's very easy to tell the difference between a static IP, dynamic IP, and public IP.

[DGFone]

What about innocent until proven guilty?

If we ban proxies, no matter the reason, false flag or not, the server thinks you're on a proxy? BAN!
Wrong thing to do when you look at it at any angle.

[DGFone]

Even if it is suspicious, all it means is that when they do something wrong, they will be cause sooner. If they don't do anything wrong, why ban them? Even if they do act suspicious. Remember that being an idiot is not a banable offence on MLK.

[DGFone]

You're saying if banned people come back with duplicate accounts but don't do anything wrong it's ok. No, it's not ok. They were banned for a reason.

Ban them when they are confirmed to be a dupe. What it comes down to is this: the mods are already doing what they can to stop dupes and trolls from coming to MLK. A determined troll will continue to troll, no matter how many barriers will be put up.

[Kiki123]

This is a great idea. I don't want Kops or Simbaholic or SimbaCanHazDonut spamming KK with nazi photographs

[WildSimba]

We need to realize what damage proxies have done to this community. Various members have come back (silently). Last night was a nazi pm festival, Nazi pridepoints, Regular spam, abuse of members and the systematic trolling events.

It depends. IP's almost never show someone's exact location. It can change it around, or come up with false positives. And, that would also be assuming that the mods should check every new member an be suspicious of every member for a proxy. It just wouldn't work, it's too much work than needed, and as said before, it'd only add more red tape to the forum.

These attacks just happen sometimes. It's a forum. No reason to drown it in more rules to prevent the impossible. The mods just need to act when it comes up.

How is this a big deal? Just have a moderator check the IP once the member needs to have their first post approved. This kind of thing doesn't happen more than once a day. The new members list shows this happening 5 times in the past week. And that's not counting the spammers accounts that were deleted

It's hardly a rule, since it affects no legit members (as Woeler pointed out), and requires hardly any additional mod effort. Like Woeler said, if they use a proxy, you can tell. You talk like someone who has never been a mod before. And if you think the attacks are done with, well, you'll excuse me while I LOL all over the place.

You also have to keep into account that every mod has something here, I know it's a flawed concept, but every mod here has something called a life. :o So maybe they don't want to be pilled with a ton of more work to do. This forum is here for everyone's enjoyment, not just yours. What you see as "not a big deal", might be a big deal to others. I already explained that this would only add red tape to the forum, and even Moka himself said there is a line to draw when you're dealing with forums, and this is most certainly where the line would be drawn.

I can speak from personal experience that the mods often find suspicious accounts fast. I mean, the members can also remember that there's something here called a report button. People here seem fast to point fingers and call out suspicious accounts in the public. That's what the report button is for. What if this person were just a legit new member? Then you just made someone feel unwelcome.

Maybe people here need to look through the board rules again, just saying. I mean, they did get updated kinda recently-ish. I think some of you haven't read them or something, because I've been seeing a lot more normal members especially these days breaking rules.

Just saying.

[wolfishgirl]

ummm... What exactly are proxies and all and how would making it so that you can't use a proxy keep banned members from coming back and spamming MLK?

[WildSimba]

ummm... What exactly are proxies and all and how would making it so that you can't use a proxy keep banned members from coming back and spamming MLK?

Proxies are these sites that help you hide your IP (internet identity, basically) from the site you're visiting. The reason this rule would be a problem is that people often use proxies for reasons other than trolling. Technically you can hide yourself in your profile and no member would ever see you besides the staff, unless you entered the chatroom. Why not ban those people too then, by this logic?