What is considered a ban evasion account/burner account?

[MechaCThun]

Genuine question.

I've been seeing a wave of brand new accounts (lately, made early - mid October or sometime in September) who get banned after 3 or 4 posts. Out of curiosity I checked these account's thread posts. Nothing I saw was being toxic, speaking about "forbidden topics" or anything that assumingly constitutes an infraction or ban.

I would have to imagine these accounts are being banned for being "burner" accounts or "ban evasion" accounts but how can you really tell? Somebody in General Discussions was just recently banned (won't say name because I think that's against the rules?) after about 5 posts and I was trying to reply back to them until ban.

Was just wondering how accounts are determined to be these.





inb4 somebody says my "ban evasion" account was closed.

[Razzako]

I would have to imagine these accounts are being banned for being "burner" accounts or "ban evasion" accounts but how can you really tell?

Probably identified by a cookie token? Maybe it stores if the user logs in two different accounts and flares up if one of those is banned, but I dunno.

[Endus]

If a user is banned, they can log out and make a new account, and resume posting. This is against site rules, so such accounts are banned on detection. I won't get into the specifics, since it just serves to help them avoid detection, but there's a range of methods that can be used.

Burner accounts are a bit different, but you can pretty easily pick those out because they're either spamming atrocious stuff, or spam useless posts to get to 10 posts, or they're advertising bots.

[Flarelaine]

Nothing I saw was being toxic, speaking about "forbidden topics" or anything that assumingly constitutes an infraction or ban.

I noticed these new accounts as well and while post-by-post they may not have broken the rules, many of the threads they opened were inflammatory, open bait threads. I suppose it's only proper moderation to take care of that.

[Bullettime]

Genuine question.

I've been seeing a wave of brand new accounts (lately, made early - mid October or sometime in September) who get banned after 3 or 4 posts. Out of curiosity I checked these account's thread posts. Nothing I saw was being toxic, speaking about "forbidden topics" or anything that assumingly constitutes an infraction or ban.

I would have to imagine these accounts are being banned for being "burner" accounts or "ban evasion" accounts but how can you really tell? Somebody in General Discussions was just recently banned (won't say name because I think that's against the rules?) after about 5 posts and I was trying to reply back to them until ban.

Was just wondering how accounts are determined to be these.





inb4 somebody says my "ban evasion" account was closed.

It's usually an easy tell when viewing their post history and burners are often used by a particular side of certain arguments. Chances are a 4 post account joining a discussion about Nazis or opening a thread about "Why the left is ____" is probably a burner account. But they likely have things like cookie tokens and such that can give evidence in a case that's less clear.

[Video Games]

I feel like 98% of the time a new account going straight to genot and not wow forums is the tell.

[MechaCThun]

I feel like 98% of the time a new account going straight to genot and not wow forums is the tell.

I was thinking this too, as it's kind of obvious if a brand new account jumps straight into a heated back-and-forth in Gen-OT. I suppose I'm still confused as to why the other ones - who don't engage in that activity - end up being banned as well.

[Skroe]

I feel like 98% of the time a new account going straight to genot and not wow forums is the tell.

The easy fix to this is have a 100-150 post requirement to post in GenOT, in order to prevent burner accounts from being created just to shitpost. This is what most forums with "OT" style sections do. Many don't even let you see it until you pass that threshold.

This forum's management is bizarrely resistant to doing that though. They're overly fixated with Viagra spam bots, and not nearly enough concerned with repeat offenders who know how to dodge the rules.

They won't even nuke threads started by burner accounts trying to start shit that happen to have a some other posts in it that spur a conversation, as to not "penalize" other people. That is nonsense. If people learned that burner account threads get nuked, no matter whats in them, they'd be inclined to not have those discussions in the first place (it would establish a norm). If burner account-started threads were nuked no matter whats in them (just because they're a burner), it would disincentivize the practice as a whole.

As it stands there is no incentive for anyone who is banned to not ban-dodge, if their reason for posting here is troll. Conversely the is every incentive for people who aren't banned to start troll accounts just to start shit as well.

The mods know this. They see it different. As far as forums go, it's a pre-modern outlook to put it plainly. Basically it's how things were moderated 15 years ago. But they want it like that. It's their sandbox.

But if one wants to point a figure to the 3 year decline of MMO-OT, the rise of burners and bad-faith posters and the lack of decisive action on them (more mods is not the solution) is the problem.

[Mekh]

Reviving this one, because the Politics board has at least one active ban evader again.

Supporting the idea to have a minimum postcount for that board to weed out returning shitposters.

[Deleted]

Also supporting minimum post count required before posting on certain boards.

[McFuu]

Reviving this one, because the Politics board has at least one active ban evader again.

Supporting the idea to have a minimum postcount for that board to weed out returning shitposters.

I'd suggest on a forum that tends to be controversial, the post requirement should be pretty high, such as 1000. If the requirement is 100 or 150, people are just going to shit post in other places to get to that limit. Making it pretty arbitrary.

[Flarelaine]

Reviving this one, because the Politics board has at least one active ban evader again.

Supporting the idea to have a minimum postcount for that board to weed out returning shitposters.

I'm against it, it would just lead to spamming other boards.

However, a three-month wait before a new account can post in Gen-OT may help.

[Mekh]

I'm against it, it would just lead to spamming other boards.

However, a three-month wait before a new account can post in Gen-OT may help.

They'd just produce pre-mades then.

If they have to re-do ~300 posts in WoW boards first, they have ~300 chances to be caught for spam.

[Flarelaine]

They'd just produce pre-mades then.

If they have to re-do ~300 posts in WoW boards first, they have ~300 chances to be caught for spam.

But that gets us back to the need for more active moderation, the lack of which is the reason for this thread...

[Mekh]

But that gets us back to the need for more active moderation, the lack of which is the reason for this thread...

Can't just be the lack of moderators, when I can tell one was there to close a thread but left without banning the twice(!) ban-evading shitposter. And yes, I did report him.

[Elysia]

Can't just be the lack of moderators, when I can tell one was there to close a thread but left without banning the twice(!) ban-evading shitposter. And yes, I did report him.

Regular moderators aren't capable of handling ban evasion/alt accounts on their own as they don't have access to the tools necessary to actually confirm or deny this accusation. A green mod closing a thread but leaving the accused accounts alone isn't any indication that the situation is being ignored.

Closing this as its gone past normal allowed discussion at this point.