Banning users from communities: usernames and IP addresses

[miriena]

Title
Banning users from communities: usernames and IP addresses

Short, concise description of the idea
It would be very helpful to many communities on LiveJournal if the moderators were able to ban users either by banning their username OR by banning any user with the same IP address as the offender.

Full description of the ideaThere are many, MANY

Comments

[rebelsheart]

Most users don't have fixed IPs (technically speaking. Mine hasn't changed in months, but that doesn't mean it can't), thereby making banning by IP address a poor tactic.

[mooism]

Banning by IP doesn’t really work. With most domestic internet connections, you get a different IP address when you reconnect to the internet. And other households will find themselves using the IP address you used before.

[licon]

AOL used to give the same IP address to hundreds of people. I'm not sure if it still does...

[hakeber]

It does.

[worldserpent]

Since many users don't have static IPs, and sometimes IPs are shared by users, I don't think this would be very helpful; also, if someone was going to go through the trouble of getting a new username to scam people, couldn't they also go through the trouble of disguising their IP by using proxies or other ways?

[qfemale]

-1 for all the reasons already listed above.

[sofiaviolet]

+1

[mskala]

I like banning by email address better than banning by IP address. Both are useless, but banning by email address is less harmful.

Useless: because it's equally easy to get a fresh throw-away IP address or email account. Less harmful: because a throw-away IP address is pretty much guaranteed to be shared with innocent people, whereas a throw-away email address probably isn't.