Okay, I need some advice. I am trying to start a forum. I have used ico-content and paid posters. There are so few 'real' members that of course I notice right away and try to make sure that new member gets responses and positive feedback to keep them there. I was delighted to see two new 'real' members yesterday but it didn't take me long to notice that these two are the same person. Looking at the IP confirms that. So far the posts are relatively short - two sentence kind of length, all pleasant enough and I have nothing really to complain about but I am a bit worried. I googled one of the user names and came up with a 98 results of all different forum postings. Oddly in all the cases where I could see registration dates, this guy signed up in September 2007. Why would someone bother to do that? Am I being set up for something and should I ban this IP or should I let this guy continue being two people on my forum until he posts something obnoxious.
A little strange... Is he hanging out at the private messages page a lot? He could be a PM spammer. Maybe he is waiting for a sig? Are those enabled right now? Are both members posting? I've noticed that some people seem to like making a test account, then they make a real one *boggle* I've no clue why but I've seen it several times in the years I've been a mod/admin. I'd not overly worry about it if the only issue is a duplicate account...at least it's a living person that signed up on their own...but by all means, watch them! Q
It's not duplicate content. The guy posts as member A then answers himself as member B. On top of that the posts are all of a similar forumula like: I commute to work everyday and can go by train or bus. I usually take the bus, what do you prefer? I made that one up but that is the structure and length of his typical threads. Also though he has answered other threads, mostly he is starting new ones in the general board, with topics unrelated to the main theme of the site. You know, I get the imprssion that this guy has worked as a forum poster before simply because of these formulaic q and a's. I have (and do still) use paid posting but I know who they all are and their posts are all more original and varied and on topic that my friendly schizophrenic.
Lol. I was thinking about sending the looney a PM. I just wondered if any experienced forum masters would recognise the classic signs of a forum attack being set up. Yikes. Conspiracy theory! I sound as nutty as my forum looney.
Could be two people from the same University, as unlikely as that sounds? Uni networks usually have the same IP, right?
Anything strange makes me paranoid as well, so I'd expect nothing less from someone else If you are worried about an attack, then do a backup (offsite) and then send the PM
Are you stoned? He isn't going to attack the site, nor anyone else. He is just trying to help make your site better. Stop being paranoid, i have got my mates to do this once on my forum. He had 3 browsers and 4 accounts, and all the accounts posted at the same time. Rob
Hi Rob, I understand that the same person can have several accounts and carry conversations to build the forum but this is someone I do not know with an Asian Pacific IP. The posts are not particularly on topic so I think not particularly intended to support my forum though as I said before the posts are not offensive. For the moment I am not going to ban the guy. I'm more interested in his motivations than paranoid and to be honest his posts so far are quite sweet. You can't blame me for wanting to run the situation past more experienced forum masters though, that is what we are all here on DP for.
If he is not destroying your forum with bad post, why not keeping him? and maybe not one person, just a shared IP.
dont ban. And do not spy on other people's information unless you think its necessary. Else it will destroy your trust.
Just monitor his posting a little more studiously than you would a regular trusted user. I agree with the others who state that he is doing your forum no harm; if anything he is doing it good! There are a number of reasons why he is doing this (such as: he might be waiting to build up his post count before adding links; or, he might just be bored with reading the Harlequin romances in the prison/nuthouse library and be seeking a more social outlet for his creative energies - who knows?) Is he making on-topic, content-rich posts? Why not engage him and see what happens?
engedi05, I can tell it is the same person because of IP, writing style, post content and because I am not bloody daft and... Notrick, I have one site that makes me money. The other, this one, makes no money but it is on a subject I care very much about. I would like to see it succeed not for profit (though of course that would be nice) but for the message and the community that the the attached forum attracts in the distant future. I don't consider using the tools made available by the forum software to investigate posters that stand out as being odd and therefore protect something I care about as spying. 3GW, I have no post limit for sigs at the moment so he has no need to run up posts. I am not going to ban him for now as he is not in any way offensive. I just found it odd and wondered if anyone would advise me that this kind of thing was the precursor to some kind of attack. I'm actually quite glad to see that everybody thinks I am paranoid and nobody has said OMG, this means you are going to get nuked!
It could all be quite innocent. There are three computers on my home network and we all share the same IP address. We have had to explain to forum owners before because we had created accounts with the same IP address. Even if it is the same guy with two accounts you need to ask yourself is he doing anything bad? If he is actually posting and not spamming then it sounds like he is helping your forum. Starting a forum can be hard work and I would let him continue to post under both accounts but keep an eye on what he is posting. At the first sign of trouble either issue a warning or block his IP.
Bigblue, This thread has made me feel much more comfortable with my split-personality poster and I thank everyone who has posted to tell me to chill. I know the two accounts are the same person and I suspect whoever it is might even be a DP member. I've said in nearly every post that this person is not at all offensive and actually comes across as being quite sweet. So my friend, if you are reading this, please keep on doing what you are doing but bear in mind the theme of the forum... and mix up post lengths a little bit.
The best option you can take is to monitor his activity. For example if you see that the same ip address is logged in at the same time, then I would be suspicious. If he posts off topic or something to that effect, then I would warn him about posting off topic. If he keeps violating rules that are in place to protect users of the forum then I would ban him. But on the other hand if he is some, "i have no life, so I will talk to my self" posters, then I would let it slide. As long as you put something in place to automate daily backups of your forum, and put something in place to monitor forum status (to check if site is down or not), then no matter what happens you should be ok.
I tend to slightly disagree with those people who are saying this is nothing to be suspicious of, because it is a little odd. There are some people who are paid to make promotional posts on forums, and it could be a build up to this sort of thing: "What do you think of Company X?" "They suck, you should buy widgets from Company Y." Or it could be automated spam that's just a little bit more lengthy and subtle than the usual bald stuff you get. Just keep an eye on it.