Imposter warning

[Norman Castle]

Are you certain that anyone is doing it deliberately? After all, if someone uses their own name, it isn't all that unlikely to meet another user with the same or very similar name as them. Or if someone takes their username from popular culture, or it's a pun (like mine) it's not unlikely that someone else will want to use the same one.

Before I registered I checked to see if Norman Castle was unused. I didn't even think of checking NormanCastle or Norman-Castle or any other variations.

The solution is, if there is clear evidence of deliberate action you ban them as a troll. If there is no evidence, then it's likely just a co-incidence, and you instruct the newbie to pick a different name.

[HenrikOlsen]

When someone creates a user named Captain_Swoop it's rather likely the deception is deliberate.
Incidentally, banning them isn't a solution as the name still shadows the real user.
They have to be renamed and/or deleted, which has to be done with great care because of the aforementioned lying piece of garbage add-on.

[Norman Castle]

When someone creates a user named Captain_Swoop it's rather likely the deception is deliberate.

Is that based on an actual incident? I'm new here so I don't know. I see you have a "Captain Swoop" registered, but no "Captain_Swoop."

Anyway, a brief check on Google seems to reveal many different people calling themself "Captain Swoop." It seems to be originally a character in "Transformers" of which I have no knowledge at all. So I don't think it's altogether impossible that two different persons would pick that name on this forum just by chance.

[HenrikOlsen]

Is that based on an actual incident? I'm new here so I don't know. I see you have a "Captain Swoop" registered, but no "Captain_Swoop."

We don't have the offending users registered under their bad name anymore, as that would mean they'd still be blocking access to the real user's profile.
What you may have missed is that Captain Swoop is a moderator, making the incident rather more suspicious.

[Swift]

Is that based on an actual incident?

Yes it was and it happened to several well established members and moderators.

[Buttercup]

A friend of mine in a different forum once participated in a poorly-moderated forum wherein trolls began routinely creating "duplicate" usernames (with one tiny character difference)...they'd post all sorts of nasty stuff as if "in reply" by the real person, pick fights; of course those folks quickly got themselves to a moderated board. It's a real loser who'd take the time/effort to create such trouble.

[TheOncomingStorm]

If someone goes for Garnet_Star all you have to do is change your name again.

[Nick Theodorakis]

If someone goes for Garnet_Star all you have to do is change your name again.

I think the next one on her list is Butterstar Garneticup.

Nick

[HenrikOlsen]

Darth Butterstar

[Buttercup]

[Provence]

How clever. The thread title is ambiguous, but both interpretations make sense.

[FarmMarsNow]

I would think that it would be fairly straightforward to add a bit of filtering software to the registration software to filter out names which are not sufficiently different from existing names.

Maybe, but a pattern parser wouldn't catch all of the lookalikes. I wonder if you could bounce new names off Goog...you know who's server, if it has a function to return all similar words? Maybe there is a hack.

[captain swoop]

I didn't know Captain Swoop was in transformers. I have used the name for years. It was a Superhero character an artist friend of mine invented back in the 80s.

[Jim]

And the Transformers stole it! I smell lawsuit!!

[Jim]

On a somewhat more serious note, if you look at the name of the poster in the pper left corner of the post, you'll see that it is underlined. One of the problems is that when so underlined captain swoop and captain_swoop (f'rinstance) are hard to distinguish.

[pzkpfw]

| captain swoop | captain swoop |
| captain_swoop | captain_swoop |

The slightly longer (wider) underscore than space is not easy to spot, without reference.

[Gigabyte]

Has anyone reported this to vBulletin®?

In all the boards that use vBulletin®, I have never heard of this.

[Nick Theodorakis]

Not being able to distinguish an underline from a space when the text itself is underlined is not a problem with vbulletin specifically, but just one of things on the web. The more serious problem, which I believe was discussed upthread, is not with vbulletin but with an add-on that makes "search engine-friendly" urls out of the links vbulletin generates. Instead of having the user profile linking to some number id, it takes the username and substitutes spaces with hyphens. Thus if someone else registers as "nick-theodorakis" their user profile will have the same url as mine.

Nick

[01101001]

In all the boards that use vBulletin®, I have never heard of this.

How about the ones that use vBSEO? I think the problem is that good solid distinguishable funny-charactered hard-to-read URLs that vBulletin generates are mashed into something "search-engine friendly" human-readable by the vBSEO addition. That makes links to user control points, where the usernames vary only by special characters, map onto one CP and cause conflict.

See earlier hint about vBSEO, this topic.

Maybe vBSEO has been fixed since it was installed here? I was hoping our upcoming vBulletin upgrade would somehow make vBSEO less stupid, or unnecessary.

ToSeek earlier did tweak vBulletin to restrict the funny characters in usernames, but it looks like underline is still allowed.

Edit. Scooped above by 1 minute. Well done.

[Gigabyte]

This whole thing makes me glad I have a one word user name.

And didn't go with my first choice, "He_who_is_awesome".

[HenrikOlsen]

How about the ones that use vBSEO? I think the problem is that good solid distinguishable funny-charactered hard-to-read URLs that vBulletin generates are mashed into something "search-engine friendly" human-readable by the vBSEO addition. That makes links to user control points, where the usernames vary only by special characters, map onto one CP and cause conflict.

And I suggested that it should have been done from the beginning by incorporating the numerical userid in the nice link so we'd have eg. an url with captain-swoop-5786 for "Captain Swoop" and captain-swoop-68245 for "Captain-Swoop".

vBSEO has several such designed-in nasty breakages, the "perma-broken link" is another, where a link generated by one user is useless for another user with a different setting for page-length because they refer to the page by number instead of by the actual post.

And later updated templates have incorporated the broken links even deeper in the system.

[mugaliens]

On a somewhat more serious note, if you look at the name of the poster in the pper left corner of the post, you'll see that it is underlined. One of the problems is that when so underlined captain swoop and captain_swoop (f'rinstance) are hard to distinguish.

The "moderator" beneath the real Captain Swoop's name and the lack thereof for the imposter is a dead giveaway.

At least in his case. In mine, watch out for boojums in black hats wearing the mug_aliens nametag...

[HenrikOlsen]

The "moderator" beneath the real Captain Swoop's name and the lack thereof for the imposter is a dead giveaway.

The second problem was that clicking on the real Captain Swoop's name got to the imposter's profile.

[HenrikOlsen]

At least in his case. In mine, watch out for boojums in black hats wearing the mug_aliens nametag...

How about the ones wearing genebujold name tags? Shoot on sight?

[mugaliens]

How about the ones wearing genebujold name tags? Shoot on sight?

That's cryptic...

[01101001]

I love a good puzzle.

[Trespinad]

So under the new system, is there an easy way to pull up a user's profile if a link isn't handy?

Before, you could just click on someone else's profile page, then type the name you really wanted in the appropriate place in the URL. Now that doesn't work. So you have to find a post. Or go through the member's list, but not everyone appears there.

To take an extreme example, suppose someone registered but never posted. How can I pull up that person's profile page? I don't know how to do it now.

[HenrikOlsen]

Or go through the member's list, but not everyone appears there.

Actually, that's changed, now they do.

[slang]

Welcome to BAUT, Trespinad!

Actually, that's changed, now they do.

Not quite. Trespinad isn't in there, and can't be found by using Search Members. Neither is unix1 whom I tried to look up the other day. So apparently at least newbie status doesn't seem to make the list.

[BetaDust]

For me, only members with 10 or more post's show up in the list.