Question about odd user name stuff on another v.bulletin forum

You can be two different people from the one computer, if you use two different browsers (possible if she's doing it to stir trouble).

Otherwise, it could be some sort of really weird caching error.

You could probably do it with the same browser installed twice (in two different locations).

Buy yeah, this smells like a troublemaker to me.

I suggest delete (at least) one of the ID's. Problem solved.

What he said!

I used to moderate a site where this was relatively common. The easiest way someone could do it was to have both Internet Explorer and Firefox (or any other two browsers on the same computer) open, or to have two computers.

Most often they do it either to cause problems or for one persona to support the other persona's opinions, stances, actions, etc.

Be aware, though, that it's possible for two people to have identical IPs without knowing they do, such as people sharing an internet connection at a university or an office building. But what are the odds that they'd be at the same V-bulletin site?

What we did to 'out' these people was log the IPs and connection times and durations, and log or gather what they said in the public forums. Once we had amassed enough talk (a few pages was plenty), it was pretty easy to spot odd turns of phrase, unusual and consistent misspellings, and other unique traits which told us the two were the same individual. How odd, that they always arrive and leave near the same times, too! We simply deleted the newer account without discussion or warning, since our rules for use included one account per member.

Maryn, grizzled veteran

That's true, some people have the same IP and they post, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're the same person, at least not always. It's not common for two different people to post on the same internet connection, though so it's hard to know what is going on.

benbradley said:

I suggest delete (at least) one of the ID's. Problem solved.

Click to expand...

Deleting an account in vBulletin or any other system sitting on top of a relational database is more than a little foolish.

There's a reason that there's a merge account function; there's a reason that SQL databases include the JOIN command.

It's not only hard on the underlying database, particularly if you do while it's live, you're going to leave "holes" in the conversation, gaps in the discussion threads.

Moreover, deleting accounts that are active sets a precedent.