Fan Forum Software Question

[DizneyFreak2002]

Intercot uses vBulletin, like many other fan sites do... Other sites use different forum software... My question is, if your IP is banned from the site, does that prevent you from posting but you can still log on, or does that prevent you from logging on as well?

I ask cause on another site, I know for a fact one of the members, who was harassing others and threatening them, had their IP banned.... Yet, he still logged in and still posted... I'll assume he masked his IP address which is very easy to do... But, it got me to thinking what does banning the IP actually do since there are ways around the IP ban?

Actually, this may belong in the Information Kiosk thread... If so, please feel free to move there...

[1DisneyNut]

I have Moderated several forums and been an Administrator on a couple. It is common to have people that entertain themselves by intentionally breaking the site rules and irritating both members as well as site staff.

I have had to ban numerous members over the years although we always went out of the way to try not to and instead guide them to become productive members. Some are there just to play with the site staff and enjoy it.

How a member is banned is dependent upon how the Administrator has banning set up in VB. You can have multiple stages of banning for various levels of seriousness of infractions where you just ban the member by user name from posting for hours, days, weeks, etc. Then you have ip banning that is usually set to only be available to the Admin but can be set available to Mods as well. You can ban the particular ip or you can ban entire domain ranges. I have had to ban entire domains that were proxy domains because ip banned members kept switching to different ip's from the same proxy domain. You can also ban them from registering using a particular email address but of course you can just get another email address. There is also the ability to ban a user by placing a ban in a cookie in the browser but.....come on.....who wouldn't use a private, cookie, data free browser window when playing cat and mouse with a forum admin. lol

Within those various levels of banning, the Admin can set them to be able to read/view posts or be completely blocked from seeing the entire forum or just particular sections.

This isn't really banning but is related: You can also set all new registrations to require Moderator approval before the newly registered member can post. This gives staff a chance to look at the new member, ip and email address and see if it fits a particular troublesome member.

So basically, all it does is ban those that aren't very tech savvy. Those that are up to speed can get around it. About all you can really do is keep banning when they re-register and look at the domains they are using and block the proxy domains they use to make it as aggravating as possible.

The next problem is banning the guys that are highly technically inclined. It isn't very hard to launch a DDOS attack on a site, overload their server and take the site down if you know what you are doing. This can be a real problem.

With all of that said, you couldn't ban me from a VB forum if you wanted to. :D

All of that got me to thinking about it and I haven't Moderated a forum in about a year now.....I kind of miss it.

[DizneyFreak2002]

Thanks 1D.. I knew about masking IPs... I just wondered what banning an IP actually does... NOTHING seems to be the jist of it LOL...

[1DisneyNut]

Thanks 1D.. I knew about masking IPs... I just wondered what banning an IP actually does... NOTHING seems to be the jist of it LOL...

Yeah that is pretty much the jist of it, it basically does nothing if they have any tech skills at all.