Originally Posted by
MidlifeCrisis
It is certainly a good idea to put more obstacles in the way of these trolls. A few points on this:
First, the site could earn a lot of brownie points if they can do some successful detective work here. If the trolling was done by someone who has posted under other names from the same computer, which is quite likely, there is a good chance that they have left an incriminating trail. The Login History feature shows that the IP addresses used for recent logins are easily seen. The "dynamic IP" where this changes every time is becoming out of date, and even people with dynamic IP set will often be assigned the same one a number of times, or one that changes only in the final few digits. This issue is serious enough to be worth a bit of effort to compare the perpetrator's trail with others on the site. They might get lucky and find there is a clear finger pointed.
Note that poker sites regularly ban players who "multi-account" by logging in from different computers through the same wi-fi router, for example.
I like the idea of some qualifying time before posting - it is only a small obstacle to a determined troll, but it would prevent things like drunken malicious impulses. Increasing the qualifying time for pictures or links would not do much, as a link can be entered as text, and it would not stop lots of other harmful info like real names, addresses of escort apartments etc.
Another possibility, which might take a bit of effort, would be to moderate the first (say) 5 posts of a new member. This would be a small deterrent to impulsive malicious behaviour.