Question

Ok guys, in response to the recent influx of trolls I propose this emergency plan:

If you spot a troll that is violating the COC do this:

Stop
Report
Block
Ignore
and get a Mod on there ASAP

Answer 1

And most importantly DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS, all they want is attention so just ignore, and do not tell them you are reporting them.

Answer 2

There are not many trolls around here. At least I don't spot them often. Maybe because they're suspended do quickly?

Answer 3

so quickly* XD

Answer 4

Yes and either way 1 troll can create so many accounts it feels like 10 trolls, so if we ignore them then they don't see the need or entertainment in making new accounts :)

Answer 5

This is the recommended method to deal with trolls currently. Also, while there does seem to be an influx recently, it may be just one person that is continuously creating new accounts/new IP addresses.

Also, we do try to keep our response time to trolls relatively small.

Answer 6

Yes but with the speed of this website it's not easy, mertsj took almost 10 minutes to ban a user that was using profanity and disobeying the COC and all orders. Also can someone just be IP banned or is that not possible yet?

Answer 7

btw I mean that mertsj took so long because the site was slow,

Answer 8

Ordinary moderators do not have the power to IP ban. But even IP bans are not always effective. Especially against the trolls that continuously switch to new IPs.

Answer 9

I don't think ip bans have any effect since you can evade them very easily

Answer 10

Yes but an average user will not have that knowledge, if he does then we need an anti-proxy set in place.

Answer 11

@dumbsearch2 made a script for that :p

Answer 12

Yes but it was not set in place

Answer 13

Most people who get suspended may make one or two accounts before giving up. These are not "trolls." It is the trolls that we are more worried about, since they usually do have that knowledge.

Answer 14

That's true, nontheless we need an Anti-Proxy

Answer 15

That is much, much, much, easier said than done. The whole idea of a proxy is that you can't tell who's behind it.

Answer 16

Yes very true, but im sure if we sat down and collaborated with the engineers working on OS we could come up with an effective Proxy behavior analyzing script that blocks the behavior of proxies.

Answer 17

Yea but what about students who uses proxys to reach openstudy because their school blocked os?

Answer 18

That's a whole different issue. Technically speaking though, if they're using the proxy because they aren't allowed to use this website, then they simply shouldn't be using the website, until they can use it without a proxy.

Answer 19

^

Answer 20

Well i guess you're right, but some schools block os only to prevent cheating and plagiarism. A lot of students don't use openstudy for those things.
Anyways if those trolls know the stuff they would still find a way around that.

Answer 21

Again, we need a way to determine if the user is currently under-going suspension even if they use proxies for the IP check to render them as a new user...
A proxy detector wouldn't work in all cases: but a much better solution would be to determine the true IP of the user, a tool like the Metasploit Decloaking Engine could be used in that case... the IP check could brake through the proxy and determine the real IP of the user, that way they could detect if they were really avaiding suspension weather they had a proxy enabled or not...
http://decloak.net/

A whole post was made and discussed about this on-going issue: http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/5188f6afe4b0d254cf0dec74

Answer 22

Also, "Ordinary moderators do not have the power to IP ban. But even IP bans are not always effective. Especially against the trolls that continuously switch to new IPs."
IP bans would not be a good idea, as they could also block whole schools/networks... + as mentioned here as well they wouldn't be very effective due to the common use of proxies to change IPs...

Answer 23

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