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Why don't you tell us how you deal with these problems on urban, fridge?
Well, Urban has a very different setup and situation, but basically: hardcore banning. Authoritarian jackboot stylee. There's a very high throughput of posters, and a relatively small number of moderators. Furthermore, the mod staff have tended to come to the conclusion that most persistent trolls are not at all amenable to persuasion or working things out in a reasonable fashion. Many are not amenable to social pressure at all - others have a small core of supporters who will always buoy them up, or actively take pleasure in the fact that everyone seems to hate them.
Most people don't come back after being banned - spammers, random bored trolls and so on. Those sort of people are not really present on Barbelith. We have had a number of people who are either admittedly or apparently mentally ill, and appear to compulsively return under new usernames to continue whatever behaviour caused them to be banned in the first place (e.g. posting child abuse threads during which they agree with themselves under multiple usernames). If contacting their ISPs doesn't change matters, these people have their real-world locations tracked down and the organisations which operate the computers concerned are informed. This is a bit of a harsh measure (and widely debated) as it can sometimes mean people getting thrown out of hostels and so on, but they are causing active psychological harm to others in such cases.
If modding U75 has taught me anything it is that some people really cannot be reasoned with. They absolutely will not stop. Terminator references aside, they are mired in delusion and cannot be argued with. In some cases, even multiple bans don't stop them, but all it means is you ban them again, and again, and again, with an increasing number of threats and actions, until they get the message. Engaging in discussion really doesn't help, something that becomes increasingly apparent if they engage in email correspondence. Thankfully, the vast majority do leave once it becomes apparent that they are going to be banned whenever they appear - and the version of vbulletin that we use has quite decent IP tracking facilities.
I'd say that multiple usernames are the first and best sign of a disruptive poster.
This is all for information purposes only. The moderation ethic of U75 is different from that of Barbelith, and the traffic to moderator ratio is vastly different. Also, it's only my personal opinion - I don't speak for the rest of the mods here. |
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