I made this thread because there was enough discussion of the topic going on in my other thread and it was getting off topic. Please continue the discussion here.

My personal opinion is that they should not. As Argonplasma said, people should not have the ability to "check up" on people they think might have more than one account. Not unless there's strong evidence to support that.

Criticize my opinion and tell me yours.

Edit: Though acidmelt and I do have the ability to change this, we will not. Jeff specifically instructed us to disable mods from seeing IP's when he gave us the ability to add and remove moderators. If this gets changed, it'll be Jeff's decision - but that doesn't mean we can't discuss this.

Yes. Less muss, less fuss.

Some mechanism to obfuscate the logging of IP addresses would be nice, though. Mods seeing IP's: Good. Feds seeing IP's: Bad.

There's simply no need.

If there's a real need, then a check can be requested.

Does it come in handy for confirming suspicions? Of course.

Does it open the door for potential abuse? Most certainly.

Am I talking in questions out of boredom? Absolutely.

But overall, this:There's simply no need.

If there's a real need, then a check can be requested.

Yes please. I'd really like to be able to view IP addresses. It would clear up alot of problems and alot of accusations.

As for abuse, I dont know about the smart mods here, but apart from comparing IP addresses I wouldnt have a fucking clue as to what to do with them in regards to 'abusing' them.

I'm with him.

I dont know..
Supermods, how would you feel if each day when you checked your inboxes there were 10 or 11 requests from mods for you to check IPs? Would that not just be really tiresome?


Part of this job is about being trusted. If we cant be trusted with a posters IP then..

You can get a lot of info from an IP, just give fate yours and see what he'll dig up about you!

I don't really need the ability to check IP's, and I can put in a request easy enough.
If possible, the option to check if two accounts originate from the same address would be welcome though, but if that option was included in Vb, we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we :p

Trust me- the federales can get IPs without the option enabled on the board. Besides, plenty of members here are government employees. :-).

Personally, I think moderators should be given access to them. I honestly don't see how they can help enforce the rules efficiently without it, but I think, like in the federal system, if you unlawfully access that information for non-government/personal use, you should be fucked. In this case, it would be something abusive, such as finding out personal information on a member, posting it in the public forums, or something similar.

I dont think we can function efficiently without the ability to perma-ban people, so I dont see where the problem is.

I think it's unnecessary. And with all the issues that have been occuring with mods lately, perhaps it's best to keep our digging abilities to a minimum. I know I don't want people checking my IP without reason, and who says someone with the ability wouldn't do it?

I'm very suspicious and untrusting, I know... :)

I dont know..
Supermods, how would you feel if each day when you checked your inboxes there were 10 or 11 requests from mods for you to check IPs? Would that not just be really tiresome?

Actually, I get about one such email per month. Maybe one or two more per month on IRC.

I've actually found use for checking IP's beyond duplicate account abuse. For instance, verifying users who email/IM me about deleting threads. I've had both sides of various petty flame wars try to get the other guy's stuff deleted/locked by pretending to be him, or just trying to piss me off... as well as the Extra Special Users who harass me outside of Totse on general principle.

Those of you who don't moderate the "bad" forums (SG, Half Baked, Bitch and Moan, and Bad Ideas, I'm guessing) probably don't have to put up with this as much or at all.

Those of you who don't moderate the "bad" forums (SG, Half Baked, Bitch and Moan, and Bad Ideas, I'm guessing) probably don't have to put up with this as much or at all.


I don't think I've had such a thing happen to me before.

And while I do see the advantage of being able to check IP's, the need just happen often enough I think.

I get quite a few emails from posters in S&A saying "hey someone claiming to be posterX has emailed me, but I think it might be posterZ but I cant be sure,can you check?"


I can understand a IP address is a important thing. Even though I've cant grasp what one would possibly want with an IP address past comparing them, I wouldnt want mine floating around totse.
However,we're mods here, surely we'd be honoured to be trusted enough to have the ability to check IPs.
We may have petty fights online, bicker and flame like the rest of totse, only we're trusted to not overstep that line. I cant see anyone here being dumb enough to post a IP of a poster or abusing it in anyway, that would be unfair,cruel,and a great breach of trust.

/rum

However,we're mods here, surely we'd be honoured to be trusted enough to have the ability to check IPs.
We may have petty fights online, bicker and flame like the rest of totse, only we're trusted to not overstep that line. I cant see anyone here being dumb enough to post a IP of a poster or abusing it in anyway, that would be unfair,cruel,and a great breach of trust.In theory, yes, we should all be trusted to not abuse the system.

However, how many mods have been removed just recently for breaking that "circle of trust"? Granted, the things that happened weren't super egregious, but whose to say that if the ability to view IP's were enabled that future mod problems wouldn't take advantage of that?

I just think that, right now anyway, enabling IP checking opens more potential problems than it solves.

I don't get what's really there to abuse. Maybe if you were uber-dedicated you could try to DDOS somebody's IP, or go trolling for open ports or something. Otherwise, uh... So what?

You post a four byte number that 99.9% of Totse would have absolutely no idea what to do with? You know what ISP somebody uses if you know about ping -a?

Big deal. You want to know my IP? I have a dynamic redirect set up at dgz.serveftp.net. You don't even have to remember it or check if it changes, just resolve that hostname. You can go troll my FTP site at port 21, my web site at port 1337, and my TA Spring server starting at port 8200.

However, how many mods have been removed just recently for breaking that "circle of trust"? Granted, the things that happened weren't super egregious, but whose to say that if the ability to view IP's were enabled that future mod problems wouldn't take advantage of that?


That's just what I was going to bring up.

^ Silly, an IP address is a magic key that allows you complete access to anybody's computer if you have it (although you can only obtain it by using the most incredibly tricky l33t-h4x0r skillz in the world).

EDIT: That was at Fate.

We don't need the ability. Admins/Supers can check if needs be, and Zok's said that he gets a couple of requests a month and doesn't mind doing them in the slightest. I know it's great to have more mod powers, but there's nothing we need and Jeff's always said he works on a strict principle of making sure everybody who has certain abilities actually needs them (I can't remember the catchy phrase he uses for it).

It's also a lot easier for a supermod or admin to check an IP. A moderator would have to check it at every post. I can just go into a control panel and search by user for IP's and get a complete list of the IP's the user has used. I wrote a script that takes in two such lists and tells you how many IP addresses were the same between the two lists. If it's more than two, it's usually multiple accounts (there's always the possibility that two people have the same host and dynamic IP's and just happened to overlap on an address).

The old method of checking IP's was a bit invasive, I think. Since you can't get ALL of the IP addresses at once, you've got to put the IP's that you DO have through more tests to see whether or not the users are the same. Even then, it's not entirely accurate unless you happen to find an exact match (which is rare). You'd have to search for the user's posts, then pull IP's out of each of them, then run them all through arin.net or ripe.net to see if they resolved to the same host (to know whether or not you've got a lead). I think the step involving looking the IP up on a database to find it's origin is too invasive. Also, I always felt like I was invading someone's privacy since I had to go through such lengths just to figure out whether or not two people were the same.

With the script I wrote, it's a lot easier to just get a definitive yes or no answer as to whether the people are the same. You don't even have to look at the IP's much less run them through a database.

If anyone wants the script for use outside of totse, it's is at: http://zoklet.net/ip_comp.pl.txt but it runs in O(n^2) so don't give it big lists.

Please do not allow mods to check IPs.

It is on a rare occassion we have to do so, and Zok and Acidmelt, among the other super-mods are online pretty much all the time.

When all else fails..


*looks up at jeff with big eyes welling up with tears*

But but... I want it..

:(

I feel that this is a power we do not need.

So simple, yet so true.

Ok it seems the majority of people dont want to be able to check IP addresses, that's fine. I'll step down after this last suggestion,
What if the mods that wanted to be able to check IP addresses were able to do so, and the ones who dont want this function couldnt? Then everyone would be happy.

(Looks shifty.)

I can already check IP addresses. But only in my own forum.

That's so invasive it's almost sexy.

Not to rain on your parade, but you can't anymore. Nobody should have access to that. It was probably enabled on accident or never properly disabled. (Yes, I know this is like getting your math test back, finding something that the teacher didn't mark wrong which they should have, telling them, and then losing points because of your honesty.. BUT it's gotta happen, sorry.)

I think the duplicate account script is a great idea to keep our eyes out of other's business while maintaining the rules about ban evasions.

I still have my reservations about how some of us deal with ban evasions even though the rules are the rules. I dont think we need to be concerned with it to the point on checking up on our suspicions because if someone is going to evade a ban, they are going to do it and it is very easy to get away with.

As long as they dont cause problems I think we should leave well enough alone because they will simply go to yet another account or have to wait until regs open back (assuming they dont lose interest). You cant defeat fire ants with a lawnmower.

Until we can check against something more unique and personal like credit cards and SSN numbers we should leave our vendettas in our words and not on the moderator console.

If we are to ban solely because of IPs I believe that we will have many innocent account banned because they used the same proxy as someone else or because of IP recycling. So I fall back onto not actively using it.

If anything I believe we need a super mod or two more who has the ability to permaban accounts or IP ban. If any trouble arises, we have a better chance that someone will be online that can handle it.

A thing did pop into mind: what about PMs for mods and admins? Or do the rest of you check your email more often than glance at a "You got a PM"? :)

PM for mods & admins sounds like a good idea, would help with simple requests.

Yar. I can view IPs in Moving Pictures, but not Half Baked. It's been like that since our IP-checking abilities were taken away.

Zok, that may be something to fix if you can, or tell Jeff.

I personally never need to check IPs for anything. Didn't need to when we could, either.

I think if someone is using multiple accounts or evading a ban, and they're a REAL problem, it's for a reason other than the ban evasion/multiple account use itself, so you can do whatever needs to be done without checking IPs. If a suspected second account spams, it doesn't matter if it's a second account.

If they just post normally, and don't cause trouble, again, it doesn't matter if it's a second account. Does it?