Need some not-coding help



  • So I mentioned I was doing an annoy-user gig. I have a bunch of plans for what this can entail, just trying to see what evil this bunch of fine people can come up with.

    We all know banning troublesome people is not that effective, and sometimes you need to troll them to make them go away. So effectively this is what I'm working on: something to troll users from the forum software. And I would like suggestions. Not on how to build it, I got that one covered (and why it's not in Coding Help) but on how to troll users.

    Here's the current list of abusive practices to dish out:

    • Randomly give the user a blank screen
    • Randomly give the user a redirection to a website of the admin's choice (default: google.com)
    • Randomly give out the 'server is too busy' message
    • Search, calendar, and a couple of other places have their own specific server-too-busy messages, issue them randomly too
    • Add random delay to the page loading
    • Randomly log the user out
    • Randomly redirect topics (so if they ask for topic 1 they get topic 2)
    • Occasionally trip the 'a new post was written while you were writing, you may wish to review it' when posting even if there wasn't a new message
    • Occasionally trip the 'you have new PMs, would you like to read them' popup even when there aren't any
    • extend flood control (instead of say 30 seconds between posts on the same IP address, extend that to 2 minutes or more)
    • using CSS transforms to rotate the entire page, either 90/180/270 degrees or one degree per second or something
    • using CSS blur to blur everything on the page or add random text-shadow to everything
    • Disemvowelling posts, shuffling the letters in the middle of a word, or stealth converting all content to Elmer Fudd (change R to W, add laughing about getting the wascally wabbit), either just in posts or the entire page
    • Randomly dropping user permissions that they should otherwise have (e.g. showing them they have permission to move a topic which they could normally do but drop the permission by the time they come to actually do it)
    • Replacing their signature to everyone except them

    Thoughts?



  • Shit, why? I don't understand who would want to do this.

    My 2ยข: after each reply, post a blakeyply trolling the troll or directly calling them stupid. Added benefit, you already have a lot of content here to use.





  • Actually, you'd be surprised.

    Compared to Jeff's weaponised empathy (which doesn't actually work in practice nearly as well as he thinks it does), his approach to the Community Door (i.e. show it to troublemakers) is not entirely broken. Misapplied, sure, but not entirely broken.

    Thing is, people intent on causing trouble tend not to respond well to bans. They end up trying to get around them etc. so you have to make them get bored.

    This approach isn't for everyone or all types of communities but there's enough demonstration that it works to build something to support it well.


  • kills Dumbledore

    Recreate the forum in Discourse and redirect them to that version (bonus: you'd get things like the random white screens for free)

    change the colour scheme, possibly very gradually, to something completely disgusting

    Captchas everywhere



  • Ooooh, I like the CAPTCHAs one.


  • FoxDev

    @Arantor said:

    using CSS transforms to rotate the entire page, either 90/180/270 degrees or one degree per second or something

    here's a very evil one that involves JS too:

    • use JS and CSS transforms to randomly shift the page. tune so it's about one shift every 45 seconds. user will be reading along and randomly the page will shift half an em (also random) to the left (or right, or up, or down)
    • Randomly shift focus away from the post edit box, or randomly move the cursor within the post edit box.


  • I have just laughed out loud with this. With a mildly evil laugh. And in my British accent, that's surprisingly evil sounding without meaning to.

    I approve of these suggestions ๐Ÿ˜ˆ


  • FoxDev

    they are quite evil are they not? especially when all the mods are in on it and always respond with "can't reproduce that behavior. sorry mate"


  • FoxDev

    ooh! even more evil!

    execute this scriptlet (which i have in my bookmarks as "IE6ify") on a randomized timer:

    javascript:(function(){var i=0,r=function(n){return Math.floor(Math.random()*n)},f=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].getElementsByTagName('*'),o=function(e){return typeof(e.style)=='object'&&e.tagName!='SCRIPT'},s=function(){while(!o(e=f[r(f.length)])){}return e.style};while(i++<5){s().display=r(2)?'block':'inline';s().position=r(2)?'absolute':'relative';s().margin=r(2)?'0':'1em';s().padding=r(2)?'0':'1em';s().width=r(2)?'':'auto';}})();
    


  • It took me a moment to figure out what that would do but damn that's evil. I APPROVE ๐Ÿ˜ˆ


  • FoxDev

    i no longer have the unminified source. that's why i included the name of the bookmarklet as a clue.

    and yes it's evil to do to someone. it's fun to do to yourself (that's why i use it) but evil to do to others.



  • I wonder how much it messes with Discourse.


  • kills Dumbledore

    I just tried running it in the console to try and work out what it does, and can't see any difference


  • FoxDev

    well discourse is fairly resistant, but run it enough times and fun things start happening!



  • I wonder if this is why Discourse sucks? Random WSOD, slowdowns, gateway timeouts, toasters, empty error dialogs, and the "You must wait 0 seconds before you can take that action" alert are all annoy-users features!

    Implement any of the above but at a much higher rate than Discourse. Make the software look broken so they leave, if you make it clear your trolling them they may try to fight through it. But if stuff looks broken and incompetently-developed, they may decide it's not worth their time.


  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said:

    I just tried running it in the console to try and work out what it does, and can't see any difference

    the effect is subtle for one run. but run it a bunch of times and really crazy things start happening to page layout


  • kills Dumbledore

    Care to just explain? I'm sure I could work it out given enough time and a Javascript manual, but I do have some work to do



  • Like this:



  • $( 'body' ).click( function()
    {
        cornify_add();
    });
    

  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said:

    Care to just explain? I'm sure I could work it out given enough time and a Javascript manual, but I do have some work to do

    it messes with CSS, making things absolute or relative positioning and adding random offsets and things. makes it look like the site was rendered in IE6 given enough iterations.

    as @Arantor has shown.



  • function myCornify() {
    cornify_add();
    setTimeout(myCornify, Math.random() * 10000);
    }



  • How did I forget Cornify? Truly today I am TRWTF ๐Ÿ˜†



  • Or for a more nefarious version, replace setTimeout with setInterval.


  • Garbage Person

    We have a misfeature in one of our apps where an automatic refresh will cause the buttons you're trying to click to jump around as the rendering refreshes (it sounded like a good idea, I swear). This concept could be weaponized by adding some JS to adjust the position of a button on hover. Randomly, though. You have to let them actually hit the button (or a wrong button).



  • You mean like Discourse?


  • kills Dumbledore

    Just thought of one that's annoyed me on forums before:
    Silently log the user out while they're composing a post, so the first they know about it is a please log in screen after the text has already been lost



  • Another forum I'm on, we have Spammer Hell: a forum especially for spammers, though titled something innocuous. There's an access group with a name that looks like it'd be the default all users group, but that only has access to Hell. Ordinary users don't have access, though mods will give it to you if you're curious, but really it's quite boring, just spammers spamming each other spammily, out of everyone else's sight and unable, as long as they're logged in, to see anything other than Hell.

    It's used for spammers rather than trolls and troublemakers - the latter get warned then banned (and we don't get many, yet), but if we're talking about people who signed up just to troll, and who we want rid of for good, as opposed to established members behaving badly, the principle may be applicable?

    Actually, though I think we never tried to implement it - and the guy who thought of it, who used to be our main admin/dev/basically ran the place went insane, attempted [s]world[/s] forum domination, was stripped of his rank, and hasn't been seen since - we did have an idea to pay for our hosting costs by showing ads in Spammer Hell only. I don't know about the practicalities but the idea of farming spammers was priceless.



  • Yes, though that's fixable by way of localStorage (which is its own set of frustrations)



  • @CarrieVS said:

    we did have an idea to pay for our hosting costs by showing ads in Spammer Hell only. I don't know about the practicalities but the idea of farming spammers was priceless.

    That's awesome!



  • OOOOOOOH

    I just had another idea. At random intervals - say every 30 ish seconds - play a random click like the one Explorer uses or another random noise like that.


  • kills Dumbledore

    Combined with a brief blackout



  • I am so glad I asked about doing this on here. Y'all full of fun ideas.



  • I wonder, can one turn a profit by hosting ad-heavy forums which aren't really used, but are set up as spammer honeypots?

    This may require experimentation...



  • Given that the spammers don't usually run JavaScript, it's unlikely. It's not unheard of, and I know one guy who did actually pay for his hosting with the spammers, but it's pretty damn rare.



  • I once hid a wireless doorbell in the ceiling in a colleagues office. At random times, not more than once or twice per day, I would ring it. After a couple of weeks his eye started twitching. Apparently he had done extensive debugging and trying to find the cause of the sound in his mac. He even asked people entering his office "did you hear that!?". After six months I took pity on him and told him (at a public dinner so he could not kill me for it).



  • Just don't show their posts to anybody but themselves. (I think some idiots call this "hellbanning".) It's a solved problem, and the solution is trivial.



  • Oh here's one...occasionally do some kind of screen-capture of their page contents and run it through an image-to-ASCII-art conversion process.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Just don't show their posts to anybody but themselves. (I think some idiots call this "hellbanning".) It's a solved problem, and the solution is trivial.

    I was going to suggest that, I call it ghosting. They can do everything they normally do, but other users don't see their posts/notifications/messages/etc.

    You could also setup the post entry textarea to have a short delay, so that the user is up to typing speed and mid sentence, then randomly move their cursor to another spot in the control.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Arantor said:

    Disemvowelling posts,

    I wholeheartedly endorse fucking with their text, if this is forum software. Create a fairly-large list of things to say like "I enjoy eating paste" or "I licked too much lead paint as a child" or even "I like Manchester United" and every once in a while put that in instead of what they actually typed, in a post.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Arantor said:

    Y'all full of fun ideas.

    :facepalm:

    Proper usage is "Y'all're" or "Y'all are". If you're feeling advanced, you can try to work in "All y'all" to a conversation, but Brits might not be up to it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Just don't show their posts to anybody but themselves. (I think some idiots call this "hellbanning".) It's a solved problem, and the solution is trivial.

    Not much fun, though.

    One variant I made, but was only useful for bots, was to return a page that LOOKED like their post was taken, but just dropped it on the floor.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    TBH, if you just want to get rid of a troll, what I've seen work probably best is to, as I've seen it described, edit their posts to "help them say what they really meant."



  • @Arantor said:

    using CSS transforms to rotate the entire page, either 90/180/270 degrees or one degree per second or something

    Have the page div scroll off the screen to the right while not providing a scrollbar.



  • Change the font to zalgofied Comic Sans.



  • Pretty sure this is referred to as shadowbanning.



  • I've never heard the term "shadowban" before, but it makes a lot more sense than "hellban".



  • @FrostCat said:

    :facepalm:

    Proper usage is "Y'all're" or "Y'all are". If you're feeling advanced, you can try to work in "All y'all" to a conversation, but Brits might not be up to it.

    That's an idea. Get a dictionary of common grammar mistakes, and swap them out, so that the poster looks uneducated.

    you're/your
    its/it's
    to/two/too
    affect/effect
    compliment/complement


  • BINNED

    @chubertdev said:

    common grammar mistakes

    use @accalia's posts as seed to add some random spelling/typo's


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    Get a dictionary of common grammar mistakes, and swap them out, so that the poster looks uneducated.

    Your average troll probably wouldn't care, or would actually like it.


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