Mark Not Matt (Funny name - never mind;))

Its a tough one - this BBS is moderated very carefully I think, its active and sensible. BUT even then, you get people logging on as a newbie to slag others off.

Personally I cannot see why they are so spineless? But I suppose its a small copy of the real world in here - you get slimeballs wherever you go

Pete

Edited to say:- Newbies are VERY welcome, its the cowards that register as a newbie with SPECIFIC purpose of attacking an individual who really need shooting!!

[Edited by pslewis - 12/4/2002 8:42:04 PM]

A while back you where asking how to make Scoobynet regain some of it's community spirit.

As I remember there were a lot of suggestions that ranged from three warnings and then banning the id to rating the id so that people could see how nice a person they were.

I was just wondering if it is possible to make it mandatory for the e-mail address to be displayed?

With an e-mail address open for all to see then people will not hide behind ids and might be less likey to throw insults at people.

Just a thought.

Mark

Matt

How would having the e-mail displayed help cut out undesirables??

All they do is set up a Hotmail account - register as a newbie - slag people off and be a pain (hidden, of course) and just NOT use that particular Hotmail account.

No sure how it would help? MUCH better to run a program and compare IP addresses, duplicates wouldnt be allowed - see?

Its VERY rare I would guess that someone just comes on here and abuses someone WITHOUT already being a contributor under another name??

Until people have the balls to stand on their own name and argue we will still have the 'Worms' Sadly.

IMHO of course ;)

Pete

Pete,

I know of other BBS sites that have also banned the use of Hotmail/Yahoo accounts, this might also stop the "worms".

I was just thinking out, through the keyboard (also just got insulted for no reason by someone witha very empty profile).

You made good and valid points though, shame really it would be nice to see an end to the random abuse some of us seem to suffer.

Mark
(Not Matt;):rolleyes:)

we should be more friendly towards newbies also, recently i was abused for interupting a thread, not on purpose, and it really did make me think of not coming back on here, im glad i ignored the guy and changed my mind. idiots wont put me off coming on here to speak.

The joys of public BBS, I really can't see a way you can stop all the abuse etc, even charging people to use the site isn't really the answer.
What am I doing on here at this time of night...oh yeah my missus has gone to watch Blue in concert....what is the world coming to :D

P1 tud - I think there just needs to be a general level of consideration and understanding all round.

Although that doesn't help us when you are deal with the elements that like to hide in the shadows and insult people.

I remember when I first started here my first few general technical questions (which were painfully dim looking back on it) were pretty much ignored. Like you I was almost put off, very glad I wasn't now.

Mark

Pete,

True, guess the more sensible elements are just going to have to live with it.

I could of course use my contacts to find out who it was and then contact the persons manager!;) Don't you just love people that enjoy routing around IP addresses?;)

Mark

mattel i agree with what you say !

I agree that the community has taken a nose dive on here and it would be nice if something were done about it. I do not think that email address publishing is the solution as PSLewis has pointed out you can just create Hoymail accounts. There is a sort of solution here, which is to use non free email accounts (as Ebay do). Also from a personal point of view, I for one would not like my email address published as you are asking for trouble from some of the more spiteful scoobynetters.

As for the IP solution there are ways of getting around IP address seeking programs, a basic one being the use of Internet Cafes, so that might not be the best solution.

A simple solution would be to charge a nominal fee for the use of Scoobynet, where you receive a user name and password, to log in and participate in the community spirit. Once the Scoobyshop is fully up and running there will be a credit card facility for joining, so this could be a extension of that?

Just some of my thoughts, excuse the rambling.

Dan

PS - For a very old gentleman, you are quite knowledgable in the skills of I.T. Mr Lewis ;)

Well I find myself agreeing with Mr Lewis once more.

Must pop down into the Post Office and check if I should have been collecting a pension for the last decade ;)

These episodes seem to come along in waves, I thought things had improved lately perhaps, I've just not been around enough.

Banshi


(BTW Pete, thats not my christian name either you presumptious old sod)

Which is the reason that mine was hidden when I registered ages ago.

Now, as I am a moderator, my email address is viewable, but it is a hotmail account and it no longer bothers me to have my addy available.

With regards to IP addresses, they are not accessable to us moderators, let alone the regular users. Only Simon can view them and he can only give the identy of an IP address if requested for legal purposes only. IIRC.

I have removed my email address due to the amount of junk email I get. I am not saying its being picked up from scoobynet but I have taken it off all BBs I visit which have an account.

Resending passwords every 3 months maybe a good one as these accounts are setup and ignored. If not revisited a hotmail account for example closes after 30 days ;).

If everyone had a static IP (v4;)) address, RIPE/ARIN/APNIC/LACNIC would get very upset as the world would quickly run out of address space. As a dial-up user get a different IP address every time they log on to their ISP, it's entirely possible for them to get one that somebody else has registered with Scoobynet. So your idea is, unfortunately, unworkable.

Carl - although IP address will change every time you dial up, NICs, which are commonly used in cable modem, have a unique MAC address so you can find people via this (not sure if the same applies to modem users).

Dan

I still feel its better to pay a subscription, however surely the IP adresses are only know to scoobynet "insiders" if this is know by others surely it goes against the data protection act?

Or am I just green to what data is sent by computers?

Image Doctor - You would be amazed at the tools available to track down and snop IP addresses. ;)

I don't think subscription is the way to go...

IP addresses...

Mine will be the same as everyone else who uses the Scottish Telewest netcache which presents the same IP address. Similarly freeserve customers get fed through a netapps cache server whether they like it or not...

REAL (not hotmail or yahoo) email accounts are the way to go. remember you can have an sidc account for a nominal sum...

I'd hate to see a system where one person could only register one username. I'm thinking specifically of all the funny, and totally harmless stuff that goes on in muppets that would be made impossible under that sort of system.

I agree that setting up new usernames just for the purpose of slinging insults at other users is cowardly in the extreme, but sadly, some people are just spineless.

People! Let's remember that this is a public site, available to all who want to engage in discussion and to those who want to take the piss in equal measure. We might not like it - I probably wouldn't be here if was any other way but for better or worse....

For those who do care there is no easy solution.....

For those that don't......GTF and try not to spoil it for everyone else.

Stewart (hotmail for viewing if you want to take the piss)

PS - I thought static IP's were only for those who had network or broadband connections.

Stewart

Static IP Addresses would not work anyway as the ip address of my PC is not logged by Simon, the ip address of one of our socks relay servers will be logged, and this IP address bares no relation to the address ranges of our internal network. But I suppose if you really needed to find out who owned the address logged you could just doa traceroute to it and find out the domain name then get some one to check the server logs, but in a company as big as HP that could take a while and you would probably be told to bog off anyway.

1) This doesn't apply to modems
2) The MAC address is not transmitted end-to-end -- i.e. each hop only knows the source and destination MAC addresses for that hop. That's why they're routers and not switches ;)

There is _no way_ you can selectively block people via technical methods such as IP addresses, anyone that's run a BBS or IRC server will know this, don't even bother wasting your time. You forget proxies like AOLs where a quadzillion people appear from the same set of IP addresses for a start.

A better way would be to have the board self-moderating. Perlmonks.org does this. Unfortunately it would require a major rewrite of the BBS software, or implementation of the Everything engine, not a small job and not something I'd expect! It would be nice to have an ignore option so you could selectively ignore people, if they know they're being ignored then they'll get bored. A list of the top ten people being ignored could be published on the front page for humiliation purposes :)

Carl - As I said, I didn't think it was the case for modems, although there must be some sort of unique ID on them somewhere. As for not being able to remotely find the MAC address of a NIC even over multiple hops, evryone in our I.T. department disagrees with you, but then I do not want to get into a pi$$ing contest here. ;)

I am interested as to how you think the MAC address can be found out. There isn't a space for the source MAC address in the IPv4 header. Sure, there may be some way you can get a web page to interrogate the host PC and get the MAC address, but IP itself (as specified in RFC791) does not transmit the source MAC end-to-end.

After a packet has passed a routing device, MAC address is lost (as the encapsulation of the IP is being stripped at the router and the MAC address of the originating PC is lost).

There is no way on earth you can find a MAC address of a computer behind a router.

interesting thread. I've had in the past a few comments posted that annoyed me, but hey, it's life.
I will NOT hide behind another username, if I disagree with someone I will tell them, Why hide? And yes, my email is visible as well, mainly, for some reason, some people do ask me the odd question they think I might know the answer to! (the fools! :D)

As for tolerance to newbies. I kinda agree with that, as a few have been 'jumped' on in the past. However, what one has to consider is the muppet side of things. Some people do just register because of the muppet forum, and then accidentially post something elsewhere and get techo-lynched, and no I'm NOT referring to anyone or any incident.

When I was green, I did ask some very daft questions ("Do I need to jack the wheels up to fit locking wheel nuts?" <head hung in shame>") but I'm still here, and now dispense the odd bit of advice.

So what to do? I honeslty don't know! Subscription? hmm, possibly, but I don't think so. Maybe have a read/write area for non registered people, and have the rest read only until you subscribe? But then this read/write forum would be deluged with tech q's and other stuff as people would not bother to subscribe. It's very tricky.

I think board is just fine as it is. Of course there will be some a**holes in a 19000 members BBS, that's natural. Those need to be treated personally by the moderators (that's why there are so many of them :D) or be muppetized as a punishment.

SN is a great source for info and LOTS of laughs! If you make the board too "exclusive" (by making people register) you'll just scare away lots of lurkers and casual visitors who might become permanent (like I did).

I don't see anything wrong with the board the way it is now. If people come on to wind people up, either don't rise to the bait, or get stuck in there and have a good old arguement.