Can you tell if a member has been Banned?

[kramer5150]

I know the subject of member banning is not allowed for discussion, so please do NOT degenerate this thread into a specific member ban-discussion.

There have been a few members that were banned, yet able to re-register under a different email address and user ID. Only to continue their unfavorable ways, scamming people and posting rude/obnoxious comments.

Question: Is there any way to tell whether a person has re-registered with a different ID, after being banned under a previous ID? IMHO this information would be useful on the F/S forum... to avoid dealing with scammers and the likes.

mods please delete this post if it violates any forum rules.

 

[gpalmer]

None I know of other than sending suspicions off to a moderator and seeing if the new account gets banned shortly afterwards...

 

[goldenratiophi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kramer5150 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I know the subject of member banning is not allowed for discussion, so please do NOT degenerate this thread into a specific member ban-discussion. There have been a few members that were banned, yet able to re-register under a different email address and user ID. Only to continue their unfavorable ways, scamming people and posting rude/obnoxious comments. Question: Is there any way to tell whether a person has re-registered with a different ID, after being banned under a previous ID? IMHO this information would be useful on the F/S forum... to avoid dealing with scammers and the likes. mods please delete this post if it violates any forum rules.

If there were an easy way to tell they probably wouldn't be able to register again. I guess you could look for similarities in posting style, but that's difficult/could easily be changed. This post was kinda unhelpful, but there's probably not much you can do.

 

[Gautama]

It seems only the account is banned and not the ip?

 

[Febs]

Based on my experience moderating other forums, I can tell you that moderators can check the IP addresses that members use. It's usually not too difficult to figure out if two different members are the same person.

Guatama, vBulletin gives you the ability to ban users or IP addresses, so it's up to the moderators as to whether they want to ban a user or an IP address. I'm not sure what Head-Fi's policy is. On the other boards I moderate, we'll usually start by banning a user, and only ban an IP address if it there is a persistent problem originating from that address.

 

[gpalmer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gautama /img/forum/go_quote.gif It seems only the account is banned and not the ip?

Depends on how persistent the clown is. There have been folks over the years who have gotten whole University IP ranges banned...

 

[M0T0XGUY]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the mods have a way of banning members based on their IP Addresses, so that they cannot just reregister under a different e-mail and continue spamming the forums.

EDIT: A little late to the game, I suppose.

 

[Wmcmanus]

There is no surefire way to tell, but if you see something that looks suspicious please let us know. We can do IP searches and then take a close look where there is overlap. If necessary, we can do IP bans as well and normally this does not create problems for other (innocent bystander) members except in a case (for instance) where the turd in question is operating from a computer lab on a college campus.

Edit: I see gplamer covered this ground already...

But as a general rule of thumb we don't run into many problems with people creating multiple accounts. Once someone has been banned they usually just go away peacefully. More often than not the feeling is mutual and they don't really want to be hanging out here anyway.

While I don't see any particular problem with keeping this thread open, I also think that the general question has pretty much been asked and answered so I'm going to close it anyway. Per Head-Fi's rules and terms of use, no member is allowed to have multiple accounts. Obviously, if someone is permanently banned they are not allowed to reregister under a different account either. To the extent that you think someone may be doing something of this nature, please report the matter to a moderator.