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Comment by pclark | Hacker News Reader

14 pointspclark17 comments

The user was created an hour ago. Odds on if it's banned, the individual will create another, similar username and then carry on. Many of the comments are on items two years old.

Added as an edit: Yup - he's done that. We now have http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=M_Arrington spamming the site.

BTW, this attack came from the same ip address the user hk (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453545) was using, 124.168.142.184.

How about banning an IP of a user if the account reaches less than -3 karma?

The current code does ban accounts that get below a certain threshold. I try to be more careful about banning ips, since they're not identical with individuals. Usually I like banning an ip to require a decision by a human. But I'm writing code right now to rate-limit comments by new accounts, which will minimize the amount of damage someone can do before humans notice.

aka 124-168-142-184.dyn.iinet.net.au

I know from experience on other forums that solving the user-banning problem is an important feature of forum software. More power to HN if there is a good, clean technical and cultural solution to that.

Just 'flag' his comments. If you can't yet flag, trust in those users who can.

sorry for making a topic, wasn't sure how to go about flagging users.

I imagine sending pg or someone else thats a mod an email would be the proper way to go.

I wouldn't know how to find the email address of a mod. Is that documented somewhere? I've had a quick look, but it didn't seem obvious.

The news.yc editorial cabal keeps its membership secret. Just email PG.

wasn't sure how to go about flagging users.

Clicking link on a post [EDIT: on a comment] presents the flag option. You can then flag the post [EDIT: flag the comment] that way, which is the closest thing to flagging a user.

but he hasn't submitted anything, so I'd have to flag entire random threads?

I stand corrected, I have to hit reply to see the flag option.

I have to hit reply to see the flag option.

That works, but so does clicking link.

Does HN ban IPs for users? How can arrington be prevented from creating new users?

Does HN ban IPs for users?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373929

Reply on news.ycombinator.com