Do you allow multiple accounts on your forum?

[Heatman]

Most forum owners are against a member having multiple accounts on their forum. In a situation where the member can be active with his multiple accounts on your forum, would you allow it? I have seen a forum where the owner allows multiple accounts registered on the forum to boost the forums number of members.

 

[Smiley]

In Soviet Off Topix, the owner has multiple accounts!

 

[Cory]

No, I do not allow multiple accounts on my forum as I see no need for it on a forum services board, just a way for people with malicious intent more than likely.

 

[KenDaGamer]

No, no and no.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I’ve posted with couples before so it gets kind of tricky if you’re going off IP addresses and don’t allow multiple accounts. Obviously two people who live in the same house are going to be on the same WiFi and have the same IP address.

Of course there is the possibility that the couple is just one person pretending to be their own spouse…. but you never know for sure (unless maybe their posting style is exactly the same, perhaps they both make the same exact spelling errors in certain words, etc)

There was a couple here several years ago and the wife was a troll but the husband was cool. I remember we had to ban the wife and the husband ended up getting banned as well because he had the same IP address. That created even more fallout and drama than there needed to be. I was 99.9999% sure they were separate people and felt bad the husband got inadvertently banned. Fixed his account but he didn’t want to come back.

 

[Cory]

the husband ended up getting banned as well because he had the same IP address.

I guess the wife never decided/knew that proxies were available at the time if she wanted to continue trolling.

 

[Jane]

Nope never.

 

[Dazzal]

No, I think it's deceiving.

 

[koop2]

It's a hard decision. I can see both sides of the argument. These days Id say limit by email but not IP. 🤷‍♂️

 

[ZandraJoi]

I don’t care for it. I feel it inflates the numbers artificially. I have had some members forget their log-in info & had to create a new account. Unfortunately, Proboards doesn’t allow for the merging of two accounts like other platforms do. I hope they get that feature soon.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I don’t care for it. I feel it inflates the numbers artificially. I have had some members forget their log-in info & had to create a new account. Unfortunately, Proboards doesn’t allow for the merging of two accounts like other platforms do. I hope they get that feature soon.

You should make a forum on the XenForo platform and get all those extra bells and whistles you need.

 

[ZandraJoi]

You should make a forum on the XenForo platform and get all those extra bells and whistles you need.

I've been wanting to lol however, I would have to start over from scratch. Proboards is the only platform I know of that doesn't allow you to migrate over. I'd lose 3 years worth of posts, memberships, everything.

 

[Banned]

I've had two forums thus far, I never allowed it. My policy was to delete the 2nd account along with a PM. If they tried it again they were gone.

 

[Fait]

I personally don’t allow it, if i owned a social network maybe but it’s a forum site.

 

[emily]

I’ve posted with couples before so it gets kind of tricky if you’re going off IP addresses and don’t allow multiple accounts. Obviously two people who live in the same house are going to be on the same WiFi and have the same IP address.

Of course there is the possibility that the couple is just one person pretending to be their own spouse…. but you never know for sure (unless maybe their posting style is exactly the same, perhaps they both make the same exact spelling errors in certain words, etc)

There was a couple here several years ago and the wife was a troll but the husband was cool. I remember we had to ban the wife and the husband ended up getting banned as well because he had the same IP address. That created even more fallout and drama than there needed to be. I was 99.9999% sure they were separate people and felt bad the husband got inadvertently banned. Fixed his account but he didn’t want to come back.

this exact thing happened to me.

I used to moderate a fashion forum (this was before I found proboards)

the person staying at my house at the time thought they could create an acount to boost the numbers, and because they knew me

what I didn't count on is them registering, sending a load of abuse to the admin (calling her very bad names), and said admin then banning me from the forum- despite me being at a completely diferent forum area at the time

a good friendship (with the admin I mean) ruined

a couple weeks later I found out that because of what had happened the admin decided to close the forum and move to another platform. not sure where she went.. like I say we never kept in touch

 

[emily]

if there was a valid reason, (such as the person not being able to log in to said account), then yes.

also if the person was being harassed then I'd let them create another account for them to use

bottom line is: I'm not aware of everyone's circumstances and as long as you're not spamming, trolling, making threats to members, I'm pretty laid back about it.

 

[Kale]

I made a rule against it due to @Nycole on my forum, but otherwise am ehh on it. If you're going around a ban, then you're gonna get perma'd.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I don't allow members to have multiple accounts on my forum. I can understand allowing members to have more than one account on a role playing forum, that way if they're playing as a few different characters it makes sense that they need multiple accounts.