Voting Mechanism for Threads/Messages

Here are a few of my thoughts.

• A registration system would require that the user provide a their name, a password, and a valid e-mail address (at a minimum). They must receive a confirmation e-mail and click on a special link therein to activate their account.
• The registration system could allow multiple e-mail addresses for a single user. This would allow me to consolidate the existing messages and easily assign them registered users.
• The registration system could be configured to automatically log users in based on cookies.
• Obviously, registered users would be able to vote positively and negatively for any message or thread. Votes may only be cast once (but may be changed???) by each registered user.
• Vote weighting could be based on: total number of posts, number of days (years) using the forum, number of positive votes, or a combination of these.
• It is possible to make the system allow posts from non-registered users. They would not get to vote, however.

How is this for a starting point?

Jon

Here are a few of my thoughts.

• A registration system would require that the user provide a their name, a password, and a valid e-mail address (at a minimum). They must receive a confirmation e-mail and click on a special link therein to activate their account.
• The registration system could allow multiple e-mail addresses for a single user. This would allow me to consolidate the existing messages and easily assign them registered users.
• The registration system could be configured to automatically log users in based on cookies.
• Obviously, registered users would be able to vote positively and negatively for any message or thread. Votes may only be cast once (but may be changed???) by each registered user.
• Vote weighting could be based on: total number of posts, number of days (years) using the forum, number of positive votes, or a combination of these.
• It is possible to make the system allow posts from non-registered users. They would not get to vote, however.

How is this for a starting point?

Jon

Jon it appears to be students from a particular university that are causing this problem right now. An IP range ban may be the appropriate answer to the problem as well as an email to the university in regard's to the posting. You do log IP address's from which people post from I assume? It should be possible to get enough information to put a stop to it via first banning the IP range associated with that university from forum access then finding the proper email address of the authorities there.

Although I don't like that type of thing, I believe the behavior is not only out of hand it's also possibly a breech of the university's rules and regulations. Either way it's making it difficult for people who have legitimate questions to even FIND there own questions let alone the answer to them.

I myself don't mind most of the humor (life is too short to be taken seriously) and when it gets a bit crazy it's never been without provocation. However the recent group of posts appear to be from people who have yet to have a moral compass (or know what one is for that matter) as well as have very little background in being civil. Much if not all of the verbal words used with them is of there own doing (or undoing as it may be).

The bottom line it appears to be people from a specific university (thus associated IP's) behaving badly. Just my thought.

Stephen

Stephen,
good idea - certainly contacting the institution in question might help. but unfortunately people can still use effective countermeasures - proxy browsers to gain anonymity, anonymous browser etc. thumbs up for the initiative, though.

Actually I have some experience with administrating forums. There are numerous things you can do. IP bans are a last resort usually however all things considered it's students who are behaving badly (they give themselves away by there poor use of language and generally crude methods), and judging just how little effort they are putting into doing there school work means that proxies etc won't be a big problem (since they didn't put much effort into very important work).

For registration if it is enforced captcha is needed (IE those twisted password images) this will deter bots (there are numerous spam bots that spam forums like this out there). I think really the big problem is just one university at the moment. If I see a few annoyance posts that doesn't bother me (thick skin from being an admin of a forum I guess). It's when it's when a consistent flagrant abuse of things occurs my ire is raised.

I suppose registration is going to have to happen, I hope they choose software that is less prone to the spam bots (VERY annoying as they can posts 100's of useless posts in a few minutes).

Hopefully the schools administration will straighten the kids out. If not there school won't have access to Keil's website (woops) or forums for anything. That's an appropriate consequence for lack of discipline.

Stephen