Chat Room Hawgs
 

What do you do when your chat room is taken over by two or three hawgs that consume resources and drive others away? In a board system with 2,500 registered users, you would like to think that this asset would be available to more than three or four regulars.

Oh sure, you can ban them, that's the easy answer.

Anyone have ideas about automated limiting devices?

Try the "miserable users hack". This won't ban the users, but will make it difficult for them to use the board.

You could also find a way to capture those particular users and send them to another url when they try to access the chat.

The most abuse was happening on private messages. I have since removed the contents of templates chat_row_special_sent and chat_row_special_recieved plus the links to send private messages.

It might be good to offer the option of private messages ON/OFF in the vBChat Options of future versions.

I've noticed that "miserable" hack. It may be just what I need to do.

what exactly is going on? are they sending massive amounts of PM's or are they just spamming the chat room?