[falter]

Originally Posted by DaNIEL MeNTED

I have removed the 10. IP from the list of "known proxies" .. I suspect that was a typo on my part. The RBL mask currently only matched the first octet because various RBLs have various return codes - all varieties of 127.0.0.x

If you want to be granular to the point of the last octet then the benefit of using more than one RBL - which was requested by several people - goes out the window as no 2 RBLs tend to use the same definitions.

I - for one - am looking at a more "inclusive" matching pattern. That being I would rather block people that shouldn't be than allow trolls in... the function of a whitelist allows you to specify IPs that are erroneously getting blocked.

First, I appreciate the update, I'll give it a try as soon as I get a chance.

How about this idea:
It could come, preconfigured, with a good number of common SBLs. For each of these, the admin has the ability to choose open proxies, spammy servers, dial-up networks, etc etc. Additionally, give the ability to add their own SBLs with their own options for matching against there.

I think it might give many admins a false-sense of accomplishment once they install this and start blocking lord knows what, but believe that they're only bad things (The plugin name says block proxies, but in reality it is blocking far more than just proxies). It's widely known that large American broadband networks are responsible for a great deal of spam, and a good number of these block-lists include those subnets. I'm afraid of doing a disservice to the users if we choose to just blindly block everything. I think that for this plugin to truly be successful, the admin should be able to finely tune what is and isn't blocked. If you've got a forum with tens of thousands of users, with hundreds of signups a day, whitelisting things would be almost certainly unmaintainable.

As for trolls and whitelisting, how are you going to know if someone is a troll or not before they've even posted anything? What indicators should be used to go ahead and whitelist one IP over another? I think that in order for our individual communities to grow, it's like dealing with spam in that it's important that we make sure that all the good guys can get in, even if that means some cruft gets in on occasion. I'd rather ban 2 or 3 trolls a month, than waste my time trying to figure out if 233.44.23.XX is going to be a troll or not, over and over and over again.