[thelist] finding ip addresses

[kris burford [midtempo]]

hi martin

part of my job for this client is to restructure their site and, in
particular, their community set-up. whilst i've a lot of experience in
*talking* about how community sites should be structured, i've not a great
deal of hands on structural experience (i spent two years at my last
employers screaming for community features and telling them how it would
dramatically improve their sites, all to no avail...).

my current client is using web bbs for their existing web forum software
(http://awsd.com/scripts/webbbs/) but are getting sufficient traffic for
this system to be *very* slow (all files saved as text and written into html
on the fly). i was looking at moving them over to phorum (www.phorum.org) as
it seems to be faster and easier to configure to fit the rest of the site
design (plus it utilises php/mysql as per the rest of the restructuring).

anyway, i'd like to think that including registration/login functionality
wouldn't impact on the use of the forum, but i've an idea that it will.

does anyone have any experience with moving from a very open bbs to
something that is significantly more structured? what were the implications?
suggestions???

thanks

kris


-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of
martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Sent: 15 January 2002 12:31
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] finding ip addresses



Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

-------------------- Start of message text --------------------

Hi Kris

Is there any scope for requiring registration/membership to post, with a
working email address being mandatory.
Then
a) you have a bit of accountability to contact the user and complain
b) It's easier for other members of the community to police it
c) You can revoke memberships which don't follow your ToS

It won't prevent abuse entirely, but it will cut it down as it's a lot of
hassle to reregister with a new email address just to be abusive on
a bbs.

Social engineering usually works better than pure technical solution.

Cheers
Martin


To:   thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject:  RE: [thelist] finding ip addresses

okay, have (finally) worked out where the message text files are being kept
and have found the ip address (read: one *badly* set up forum).

foolish question for today - how do i then identify the user from an ip
address... i've been to a whois service, found that the ip address refers
to
a large isp (bt internet), but beyond that, i'm stuck...