Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25855974-20160806034121

This is a term used by users who make more alternative accounts in order to bypass a punishment or use it to troll users. There are recent arguments about this problem, and I'm going to discuss about these problems, a few that I'm concerned about.

The sock account hole. This is a term I use when a user thinks they're unfairly banned and they think the only way they can resolve their ban is to make another account and forget it ever happened. This is a topic that was brought up by two users; Korndude and Ryujo. I don't think they're in the right, but they aren't completely guilty. Once they made an account, they basically extended their blocks so that they fall into this trap. Most users find that wikia staff will not help them resolve their problems, so they take matters into their own hands.

A solution to prevent future sock account holes is to do two things:


 * One is to have the wikia staff or some other member of wikia to either notify them about a way to talk with a member to resolve their ban.


 * Have an automatic message give the globally banned user a link to the Special:Help function and/or give them a warning to prevent them from making another account.


 * Have a warning, before making a wikia profile, about this problem.

Another problem is that the use of sock accounts can be abused. Some users would rather make accounts to vandalize and spam, but it can be solved with an IP ban, right? Some users take things too far and used VSP (is this what its called?) to change their IP, allowing them to get away with it. They will not learn that their actions have consequences and they just want to annoy users.

These vandals won't listen, so talking with them is not advised at all. Possible things to stop these types of vandals:


 * Users will have to read a proportion of how to ignore trolls. This is currently used by staff but it doesn't help, so make it easy to read and understand, and make the suggestion more necessary rather than advised.


 * Add a function to prevent users from changing their IP's in order to make their accounts. I heard that other websites do this.

There are ways to prevent these problems, but most users and staff don't consider this as a huge deal. It is a huge deal when users feel unfairly globally banned by staff and vandals getting away with vandalism. It's the best to at least try to resolve these problems with better solutions. Leave your opinions on this subject. 