Troll detection.

[Mr Bear]

Is it viable to detect multiple troll accounts from common email addresses?

It might be a way to filter them out and then block further ones being registered.  Domains associated with disposable email addresses could be rejected by default.

Sadly there are always sour trolls on all forums.  But on a plus note they're greatly outnumbered by worthwhile contributors.

[JoeyDeaconsCat]

Manx.net accounts can only be set up from a Manx IP address. But you can’t just bin off or block people because of the ISP they use for their email. 

Edited November 21, 2017 by JoeyDeaconsCat

[ans]

We already block a few of the free email providers that have been used in the past, but with the ease you can set up a Gmail alias, that seems to be the default choice and we can't very well block Gmail. 

[pongo]

19 minutes ago, Mr Bear said:

Is it viable to detect multiple troll accounts from common email addresses?

No. For various reasons - but the main reason would be that one of the best email services in the world today is gmail. Which is also utterly disposable.  Also - it's trivial to set up almost unlimited numbers of respectable accounts. Especially if you manage your own domains.

PayPal, by contrast, is a relatively good way of validating an account. It's not trivial to run multiple PayPal accounts.

Edited November 21, 2017 by pongo

[The Faceman]

5 minutes ago, pongo said:

No. For various reasons - but the main reason would be that one of the best email services in the world today is gmail. Which is also utterly disposable.  Also - it's trivial to set up almost unlimited numbers of respectable accounts. Especially if you manage your own domains.

PayPal, by contrast, is a relatively good way of validating an account. It's not trivial to run multiple PayPal accounts.

It would be easier to just go on Facebook if this is just some ploy to get people to pay a subscription to use MF. People wouldn’t bother and would just migrate to Facebook. The choice to subscribe is always there but really it doesn’t get you anywhere as I used to subscribe many years ago and the only extra it gives you is access to a subscriber forum that nobody ever posts in anyway. 

[pongo]

3 minutes ago, The Faceman said:

It would be easier to just go on Facebook if this is just some ploy to get people to pay a subscription to use MF.

Suppose it was a nominal amount - 50p for example. Or whatever the minimum PayPal amount is. Not for the money but as a way of recording the address of the account from which the payment had been sent. A persistent troll would not be able to continually create new PayPal addresses.

And suppose, as an alternative, you could choose to validate via Facebook.

Edited November 21, 2017 by pongo

[RIchard Britten]

11 hours ago, The Faceman said:

...subscriber forum that nobody ever posts in anyway. 

Wrong.

[quilp]

11 hours ago, The Faceman said:

It would be easier to just go on Facebook if this is just some ploy to get people to pay a subscription to use MF. People wouldn’t bother and would just migrate to Facebook. The choice to subscribe is always there but really it doesn’t get you anywhere as I used to subscribe many years ago and the only extra it gives you is access to a subscriber forum that nobody ever posts in anyway.