An alternative to banning: Miserable Users

This hack is an alternative to banning a user. As the name suggests a user who
gets hit with this hack will become truly miserable while trying to access
your board.

So here is what really happens to a miserable user:

- There is a random 60-120 second delay each time they click on a link.
- 90% of times they have no search engine acccess.
- 75% of the times they get the server too busy error.

If they don't get the server too busy error:
- 50% of the times they may get a blank page
- 30% of the times they may get forwarded to the forum main page
- 20% of the time they may be able to see the page they asked for.

after doing all the math in actuality they have only a 5% chance of seeing the
page they clicked on. What kills them is the time they have to wait before
anything happens.

I actually once tracked a miserable user and watched him suffer for 2 whole
hours before he was able to make a simple post.

This hack is considered one of the most sadistic hacks on my board.

The hack allows you to make your user miserable via the admin CP. It also
allows you to search for all miserable users through the admin CP as well.

Also in showthread.php, it appends a red status that is only visibly to admins
and mods stating that a user is miserable.


Tables affected by this hack: user

Files affected by this hack: global.php, showthread.php, admin/user.php

[pie]

nice idea bud.

[Areku]

After using for a long while this hack, it's obvious that only people that try to log in with his banned nick will get the too busy, but 99% of them notice that when logged out they can navigate without problems (and registering a new account solves the problem too), so I was wondering which kind of message do you people use so they really think server is bugged out....

[Zzed]

Recognizing people is a very hard thing to do.

I have implemented an unpublished IP trapping mechanism that works like the VBulletin IP ban, except that anyone, registered or guest, coming in on an IP in that list will have a miserable session. This will not work with dial up users because they are coming in on an IP pool and I have in some cases 200+ people sharing the same dialup IP in my IP records.

But this works finr with users who have limited IP's. I have also added the IP addresses of some big name anonymizers to my miserable IP list.

[king sting]

Pure evil, I love it, there are some times when we just want to get under someones skin cuz they post up hella stupid commentary. hahaha this will teach em

[atomic fireball]

This hack is pure and utter GENIUS.

I'm still setting up my board, and it hasn't been launched yet, but now I look forward to the day when I get some user to make miserable.

Great idea!!

[majin gotenks]

lol this seems so cool, im going to install it on my test board. thanks!

[gmarik]

It's the best idea I've ever seen on vB!

[Zzed]

Thank you all for your kind words. I am most honored and very grateful.

[amykhar]

Ah, it's very quiet on my board now. Blessed relief. Thank you. We had a twit who had to say something and obnoxious in almost every thread that he read. I watched him try to get in for ages today, but we got some relief from his antics today.

[vB-Host.com]

Ok install worked but when in a profile and change it to mis user yes and hit update I get this...

Database error in vBulletin Control Panel 2.2.9:

Invalid SQL: SELECT userid
FROM user
WHERE username='testing'
AND userid <>
mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 4