How do YOU deal with repeat troublesome users?

[Deimos]

I'm curious as to how other board owners deal with those who repeatedly sign up over and over again using proxies and new email addresses to cause problems

We've got our first "case" of such a person and it's proving to be a nightmare, but I have no real idea how to deal with it

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[Wayne Luke]

Place them in "Tachy goes to Coventry". Then ignore them and when they get bored they will go elsewhere.

[Floris]

I ban their ip in .htaccess and vBulletin, and I ban their email, and I merge their accounts to their first account. And I keep record of their actions in a thread in my user report forum. I do not give them public attention, and I am persistent. The less interesting it is for the abusive user to come to the site ..

[Razasharp]

A good mod team will spot them and ban them, over and over again - takes less than a minute to ban them. Yet it takes them much longer to sign up a new email address, re-register, re-verify, post, etc. They soon get bored.

[Deimos]

This one's a self confessed cannabis addict, so he's not boring quickly enough

[Wayne Luke]

This one's a self confessed cannabis addict, so he's not boring quickly enough

Maybe not but they'll have to take breaks for munchies and might find something new in that time.

[Vtec44]

The first 10 post of new users on my forum have to be moderated, then they go into the regular usergroup after that. So once we ban someone, it takes a while for people to get back.

[---MAD---]

The first 10 post of new users on my forum have to be moderated, then they go into the regular usergroup after that. So once we ban someone, it takes a while for people to get back.

We plan to put that into place on our forums too.

[Vtec44]

One time, we banned this guy and he came back using a proxy. He started to spam the forum but was stopped pretty much on the spot. He posted almost 100 posts but no one could see it. The funny thing is that I have 30 seconds flood control on, so it must have took him at least an hour to post all of the post.

[dapoling]

A good feature to vbulletin is to allow new users to be placed into tachy versus moderation, then you can see their intent before choosing to ban, delete or allow.

When it comes to banning ip addresses it is a struggle. Look for patterns as all of them coming from china and then search for china ip addresses and then ban the lot if you do not seek users from china (this is where a lot of faked ip's come from.)

Do a search in your search ip's to ensure you are not wiping out your members by mistake.

Along with this there are a few hacks multiple login detection and a couple of others to help slow them down.

Ignoring usually works the best by tachy, they become bored as no one playing the game with them.

[Abhi9]

A combination of the miserable users mod along with Tachy goes to Coventry might work well. A miserable user who is ignored will get bored soon enough.

[Chazel]

I think Tachy goes to Coventry would be a much-more useful feature if the ignore feature didn't place a message stating that their post is hidden. Most people, out of curiosity, would display the post out of curiosity.