Proliferation of alt accounts

Just contact once, add few moderators, and the rule of not posting for 30 days for new accounts and that's it. No need for more.

I can be a sleepy moderator. I will hunt every sleepystudent alt's which appear.

ILikeChina said:

I can be a sleepy moderator. I will hunt every sleepystudent alt's which appear.

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You get my vote just for this!

ILikeChina said:

Just contact once, add few moderators, and the rule of not posting for 30 days for new accounts and that's it. No need for more.

I can be a sleepy moderator. I will hunt every sleepystudent alt's which appear.

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He probably thinks he's special now.

ILikeChina said:

Why this forum has zero action? Zero action for new moderators and zero action to prevent alt accounts. We've been talking about it for two years. At least you can make things like new account can't post for 60 or 30 days. That's one line of code. Do sth.

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Because there's no way to prevent alt accounts from proliferating if they use methods such as proxies.
The way that the forum identifies alt accounts is by identifying IP addresses, and that is the basis in the rules that moderators take to have evidence to identify and ban duplicate accounts.
It goes without saying that it is very easy to circumvent the current measures to identify duplicate accounts -- there is currently no basis in the rules for the moderating team to simply ban new accounts just because they post similarly to recently banned accounts.

As for making it such that a new account can't post for 60 or 30 days, that level of control of the forum's function is beyond the moderator's ability.
It is also very questionable if we want to put in a blanket function that prevents new accounts from posting for that long, as it will also significant dissuade new users from joining as well.


So, why is there "zero action"? Well it's because currently the forum is acting at the limits of its functions, and unless the rules are revised to allow moderators to ban people who are simply "suspected" of being alt accounts without evidence, then there will be no ability to act.


Choose your poison.

Bltizo said:

Because there's no way to prevent alt accounts from proliferating if they use methods such as proxies.
The way that the forum identifies alt accounts is by identifying IP addresses, and that is the basis in the rules that moderators take to have evidence to identify and ban duplicate accounts.

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Howdy.
I think the moderators will have to move beyond identifying public ip address due to the fact that proxy servers & vpn uses same range of IPs. IP overlap is common problem comes with both of these. Now the question is why would anyone use proxy or vpn. Around here we can't access defense forum such as pdf or sdf without vpn due to outright block or non responsive servers. I personally bounce my broadband IP because of my own concern with static public IP address. I think a previous post makes a good suggestion that ID verification might be a good measure. I found out my previous account has been banned due to multiple account showing massive overlap with an id that had no activity as well with minimal overlap with another IP that was as active as it could get. Practically sitting here i had overlap with accounts from north pole as well as south pole.
One suggestion i would give , is to make the links and pictures public which can't be viewed without account. I created both my pdf and sdf account due to that.

Kabir said:

One suggestion i would give , is to make the links and pictures public which can't be viewed without account. I created both my pdf and sdf account due to that.

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That only means that these measures succeeded in attracting users to create accounts, so why change it when it is useful

Plus showing pictures to the public would increase server costs for the website owner.

Kabir said:

I think a previous post makes a good suggestion that ID verification might be a good measure.

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We already debated that. There are potential legal liabilities for the website owner if he gets hacked and that info is leaked. Plus there are privacy issues.

This is not the 2000s wild west anymore where website owners were using whatever user data they wanted with no responsibility.

Now there is GDPR in Europe, China is now implementing PIPL, the US is behind but California AFAIK has its own law on this

Kabir said:

Howdy.
I think the moderators will have to move beyond identifying public ip address due to the fact that proxy servers & vpn uses same range of IPs. IP overlap is common problem comes with both of these. Now the question is why would anyone use proxy or vpn. Around here we can't access defense forum such as pdf or sdf without vpn due to outright block or non responsive servers. I personally bounce my broadband IP because of my own concern with static public IP address. I think a previous post makes a good suggestion that ID verification might be a good measure. I found out my previous account has been banned due to multiple account showing massive overlap with an id that had no activity as well with minimal overlap with another IP that was as active as it could get. Practically sitting here i had overlap with accounts from north pole as well as south pole.
One suggestion i would give , is to make the links and pictures public which can't be viewed without account. I created both my pdf and sdf account due to that.

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ID verification is hilariously beyond the scope of what this forum would allow for and the relative degree of personal to online anonymity this forum (and others like it) offers is one of the major reasons why it functions.

The extent of trust that people would allow to provide their true personal identifications to an online service, would have to be be at the level of a major, legally beholden private company, or even a public/govt initiative of some sort. Not an online forum like this. The differing scale of legitimacy and accountability between those sort of large organizations/companies/initiatives that can reasonably request personal ID, versus an online forum, is... astronomical, such that I can't believe I'm even seriously replying to explain it in the first place.

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There's only one practical solution that I can see, without requiring a massive overhaul of how the forum works (which may or may not be technically or even legally possible depending on the suggestions people have previously made), and that is to give moderators some type of ability to ban accounts simply on the suspicion that they are an alt.
But it goes without saying why that would be controversial at best.

and that is to give moderators some type of ability to ban accounts simply on the suspicion that they are an alt.

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So be it. Let's make a vote an implement or not implement it. I am for it.

I would also a suggest maybe more mods. Last time there was high chance by78 could be. I would suggest @Tam if he wanted to be a mod. Maybe also separate mod for club forum? I think we could have many candidates.

ILikeChina said:

So be it. Let's make a vote an implement or not implement it. I am for it.

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That is not something that can be easily decided just based on a vote. That level of power would greatly change the way this forum works and could lead to substantial unforeseen consequences, if implemented.

And it would require the webmaster to agree to it as well, as well as a deliberation of the moderation team as to what the modus operandi would look like.


Of course, the other unsaid option is for people just to use the ignore function on the forum.

ID verification is a silly idea and it's a red herring that distracts from what I'm proposing. If I were more conspiratorial I would think those who proposed it did so intentionally to muddy the waters.

Bltizo said:

So, why is there "zero action"? Well it's because currently the forum is acting at the limits of its functions, and unless the rules are revised to allow moderators to ban people who are simply "suspected" of being alt accounts without evidence, then there will be no ability to act.

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There's plenty of evidence. Stylistic analysis of texts to determine authorship is a legitimate science. In this case there isn't the one piece of evidence that this forum accepts: identical IP addresses. As you've already mentioned, spoofing IPs is trivial.

Bltizo said:

It is also very questionable if we want to put in a blanket function that prevents new accounts from posting for that long, as it will also significant dissuade new users from joining as well.

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To be very honest with you, I don't see very many new users on the forum. They seem to mostly just sign up and lurk. There is, of course, a type of "new" users who pick up the conversation right where they left off. I suggested a more nuanced version of post throttling in the peer moderation suggestion thread - new accounts would have a daily posting limit for a period of time, which would be waived if forum veterans consistently upvote their posts.

Bltizo said:

That is not something that can be easily decided just based on a vote. That level of power would greatly change the way this forum works and could lead to substantial unforeseen consequences, if implemented.

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I think restricting this new banning authority only to cases where there's strong suspicion of an alt has benefits that outweigh risks. To further mitigate against abuse of authority, banning in this case could be done by a vote (consensus or majority) among moderators. I would trust the moderators here (even those I've had issues with in the past) to act with the appropriate discretion.

Bltizo said:

Of course, the other unsaid option is for people just to use the ignore function on the forum.

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That's not a solution. It's not feasible in an environment with no traffic laws to decide that you are going to drive safely yourself regardless of what others are doing. You're only putting yourself in more danger if you do that. The rules have to apply to all.