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

[Zzed]

Will do.

[cybermomcafe]

ummm maybe i'm doing something wrong, but when I run the sql query

"alter table user add miserable smallint(5) unsigned DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL;"

I get the error message:

You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'DEFAULT0 NOT NULL ' at line 1??

[Boofo]

Try this:

alter table user add miserable smallint(5) unsigned DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL;

[cybermomcafe]

Thanks! i'm new at the hack thing LOL

[Boofo]

No problem. We have all been there.

[cybermomcafe]

tee hee.... me likes

(hadda test it out... had to clear my cookies to be able to even log out LOL)

[Zzed]

Today at 04:52 PM cybermomcafe said this in Post #67
tee hee.... me likes

(hadda test it out... had to clear my cookies to be able to even log out LOL)

LOL

You can always try and log into your Admin CP to get around the misery hack, and set yourself back to normal.

[CJi]

ROFL! This is perfect! Well done...!

[Judo Gno]

OMG, what a great hack. This is awesome. Thank you very much for this. We installed it today and it already has a few very deserving victems. lol

[TheEDIGuy]

I'm going to install this, because we have a few users who connect from a large number of different IP's so we can't ban them. It would be even better if we could set a level of how miserable we want the user. Like 1 for just the occasional error and short delays, or 10 for full-on misery.

Great hack, my mods are begging me to install!