[ScottA]

Originally Posted by OGF

I really need some help/advise.

I've got a real problem with people being abusive on my forums. I ban them, and they re-register under a different name and email to start all over again. It's keeping us busy for sure.

The only permanent solutions I see are to prevent users from using free email services (hotmail, aol, yahoo) to register, hand verifying each member, or blocking popular ISPs like AOL.

What do you people do to deal with these yahoos?

Thanks for your opinions.

I used to play the "ban their account" game, but some people can keep it up forever! I have one member who must have been banned a dozen times. Banning IP addresses is often a scattershot approach since most are dynamic and you risk blocking other users also.

Now I have fun with them. The miserable user hack is gold. "Tachy Goes to Coventry" is useful also. I've also customized my own installation so that some people get to listen to a toilet flush each time they view a page. Anyway, the member who has been banned a dozen times gave up shortly after being made "miserable" and only rarely posts now. That's been the case with a couple others as well. When we permanently ban members many just open up another account within hours, so if they continue to cause trouble stronger measures must be taken.