[WikiEN-l] Intention to (re-)ban: Pizza Puzzle (Lir)

[Erik Moeller]

James-

one problem in enforcing bans is that we have to be *sure* that the person  
is the same one as the previously banned one. In Adam's case this is quite  
obvious, but people have been defending each of his incaranations, so it  
doesn't surprise me that the current one is defended as well. I'm not sure  
ChuckM is really DW, though. The long rant he put on [[Wikipedia:Votes for  
deletion]] did not sound like something DW would write. Which doesn't mean  
that you aren't right, of course, just that I wouldn't ban ChuckM on the  
basis of the evidence.

Because we have literally no identity requirement before signing up as a  
new user, it will always be easy for people to come back under new names.  
Previously we at least had an email field that many people believed was  
required for signing up. So many banned users added their old email  
address, nice! Then someone complained, and now it explicitly states that  
you don't need an email address.

There are several technical solutions that have been discussed for making  
bans work better. I think the following ones are pretty good:

1) Log the IP address the user signed up with and allow sysops to view it.  
That makes comparisons possible and narrows down the identity. It also  
allows banning in case of emergencies.

2) Place a "bad cookie" on their machine that allows us to identify them,  
if they do not notice and remove it. (Most users just accept all cookies  
without checking.)

3) Require a valid email address before signup, e.g. by sending a new user  
the password by email. No valid address -- no password. Some say email  
addresses are just as easy to create as user accounts here. I do not  
agree. Setting up a Hotmail account is quite a PITA, for example, and most  
people don't know many freemail account providers. It has certainly worked  
for Kuro5hin.

Regards,

Erik