[SDB]

Hi

Its developed in house, and not really ready for release as a product. But if there was enough interest in it, we'd probably package it up.

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What you have to think of, is what constituts "an account that someone doesn't want to lose".

As soon as you have that, you're on to a winner.

Lets say you decide that a valuable account is one which has been registered over 6 months, and has more than 500 posts to its name, with no infractions - which have not been subsequently reversed.

Let this accounts have a little tag next to their name saying "power account" or similar.

give these users the ability to use the ban facility.

If anyone abuses it, they lose it.

Then :

Most of them have fair number of posts built up so the 50 post mark would not be enough.

This was exactly the same for us, but all you need to do, is get through the hard work of permanently banning these accounts, and their only choice is to play nice with their new accounts or the membership will ban them.

And I can foresee them ganging up and ban someone completely innocent simply because they clash.

This is simple as well. They can only do this once, because you'll then ban them for it, meaning they no longer have an account with the ability to ban someone.

It really is a very elegant solution, as its almost completely self managing.

We have an incredibly busy forum which was - 6 months ago - renowned for trolling, and it now almost 100% clean. It really has transformed things.