Suggestion: Make it slightly harder to make an account to help filter trolls

Question

We all know Josh Kool, and we all know Gligurr. Lately, there's been a lot of dupe account drama. If you don't know, then don't worry about it. We do not speak of that.

What if we made it harder for people to make dupe accounts while signing up? Not like, chaotically difficult, but slightly more difficult that makes it annoying to sign up over and over again. Some ideas are:

• Making the user confirm the email address before being able to access the chat, edit profile, or post on site*
• A phone number option instead of email, where users can confirm their account using their phone number and a verification code*
• One of those dumb capcha things everyone hates
• Security question perhaps? Nothing hard, but I personally find these tedious to fill out over and over. Could also be used for password resets too?
• The new account creation limit lowered per timeframe per IP, suggested by HT (see more quote below and in the comments)

Any other ideas are welcome, but basically, I propose a way to make it slightly more annoying to make an account. Not hard, just annoying, to filter dupes, spams, and trolls. If anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to comment them, and I can add them to the list!

*obviously, emails and phone number would be one per acct, to limit abuse of the same address or random numbers (since they have to be confirmed).

Also make sure that if they need to confirm through phone that not confirming doesn't take up that number in case if they try to use a random number and someone who actually has the number tries to join. :P
commented 23 seconds ago by Staka~

I also agree with this, maybe if possible if a user wants to use a number that's already taken to confirm the acct, they can contact a mod and the mod can remove it from the previous profile if inactive? This would be good because like, numbers do get shared, someone could be from the same city, make an account with a number, and then somebody else may get that number at a later date and try to make an account with the number, so if there were a hypothetical way to manually accept or remove a number from a profile, that'd be cool

"There's a limit to how many accounts somebody can create per hour??? I feel like that should be one, maybe two, but I don't really see much of a reason for it to be any higher."

-HT (more of the post below)

I was kind of confused by his wording, I think it would be worthwhile to lower and/or impliment Unfortunately, since our infamous trolls get around the IP ban, this won't do much in those particular instances, but I still think this idea is great in general. I'd love to see it.

Comments

Hmm nice+1

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Some thoughts:
* Basically, I agree with sumwun. I don't think this is that big of an issue.
* Email confirmation is already enforced for the chat room, as far as I know. I don't mind phone confirmation (though the kids here probably wouldn't like it).
* Not sure adding captchas for humans is a good idea. They won't stop people like Josh Kool who are motivated.
* There is a limit on the number of accounts that can be created per IP per hour, which Pokemaster could lower.
* The real way to annoy trolls making new accounts is to stop engaging with them -- "don't feed the troll" is not just a platitude. People here really like to toy with Josh Kool and whoever (and I get why), but I'm very confident the attention is what keeps them coming back. If they're banned without a word, there's nothing in it for them anymore.

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There's a limit to how many accounts somebody can create per hour??? I feel like that should be one, maybe two, but I don't really see much of a reason for it to be any higher. The only reason I can see anybody using any more than one is if they have other people using the same network signing up or if they accidentally create an account and they get locked out of it or they did something wrong and they have to create a new one, both of which are entirely possible, but waiting an hour isn't that big of a deal. The chances of multiple people signing up for the website on the same network at the same time are slim, and even if that's something that happens, I feel like an hour wait for a second person to sign up isn't unreasonable in the slightest, especially if it helps stop people from creating dupes after getting banned.

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Ht i'm a little but confused abt the wording at the beginning but i appreciate your insight and added a bit of that to my post alongside my own commentary

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@fizz,

- i dont think email confirmation is needed to enter the chatroom/post, would you mind if i created a dupe with the sole purpose of testing that?
-that was def one of my less good ideas, the capcha one. I honestly dont really know, i just think there should be a bit more of a filter, and i'm trying to offer ideas, even if they arent that great
- the phone number would def be a pain for the majority of the younger members, so thats why i'm thinking it'll be a choice to confirm via email or phone number? Not both, but one or the other :P just proves a litter bit more of human and authenticity if they actually have a number
-i dont think it's that big of an issue either, but you have to admit, its a huge nuisance esp when they come in giant waves, like the gligurr one from dec and y'all couldnt force remove the 30+ accts from chat

Edit: i made the dupe (its literally called tys dupe to test if you want to ban it) and yes you are correct that i cannot post on chat HOWEVER i can still be shown on the list and access it. I recently saw a meta threat about pm saying he fixed banned users from showing up on chat, so should i edit and address that post on this one?

I also had access to edit my profile asap which i think would be a good thing to disable until the emails confirmed