I've been a member of many online communities over the years, from online fora to newsgroups to muds. This is a topic that gets brought up from time to time in all of them, it seems. The "regulars" in a group all get to know each other over time, and get very comfortable around each other.

Now, as with any group, there will be people who are not considered "regulars" -- I would be one of those people on PerlMonks. Sometimes, people feel left out not being a part of the "in crowd." Other times, you'll just run into people who want to cause a stir. (Note: I'm not saying either is the case with im2., for I simply don't know.)

This leads to someone asking "How can we make our "entrance requirements" (name choosing, password auto-creation, email verification, what-have-you) a bit stricter so that <some situation> doesn't happen again?

In my experience, this is usually a bad idea, as it has the tendency to limit who will/can be a part of the group.

"But," you say, "that's exactly what I'm asking for!"

Here, I would ask if that's really what you want. Do you intentionally want to turn potential new members away? Is that the best thing for the community?

I have rarely seen the case where an intentional limit placed on community registration turns out to be a good thing for the community as a whole. In addition, even if you were to change the registration process so that new users "Yendor.", "Yen-dor", and "!Yendor" could not be created, would your process also check for, say "Ynedor"? There's always another way to get around that filter... Even if you place someone in charge of "approving" all incoming users, that's only as good as that person is at checking against all current users -- and that system is therefore fallible, as are all people.

In this case, my experience tells me that you will get fooled once -- maybe twice -- by the new user, and then you will learn what to watch for, and likely not get bitten by it a third time.

-Yendor

IWeThey
HOPE Ride

In reply to Re: How to prevent impersonation of other users by Yendor
in thread How to prevent impersonation of other users by bart

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