regarding the suggested lock out.
1. the member would need to lose the email address they gave TR and not realise it when their newsletters stop arriving, which I will admit is possible as not everyone gets them.
2. They post a message another member sees as spam. A very low probability event for a normal member.
3. Another member hits the button on them.
4. The email is sent and bounced.
5. The account is locked until reviewed by TR staff, such as yourself. If only one or two messages tagged, or whatever, TR staff then choose to either kill account or reinstate.
At this point TR knows the persons email address is invalid and can post a message on the board for the member to contact them or update their email account info.
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Second point, re free accounts.
This process would result in the account being killed and the account owner's email address being placed on a list of unacceptable users. Thus, every time they spam TR, they have to go through the process of opening a new account to do so. Eventually, they'll find that too much trouble.
Also, if you go through the process of reporting their email account to the service admin, the account should get closed, and whatever account they used to create the original should also get put on the alert list. Hopefully, this will lead, in the long term, to their main account being found and closed. Or they have to go to a long and extensive process of opening accounts to open accounts to open accounts to post spam, and they get fed up.
If they enter a spoof address, they only get to post about half a dozen spams before the account is locked up. Saves us all a lot of trouble. And if they have a valid address, we're no worse off than we are at the moment. I see this a s a no lose situation.
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Overall, I think the concept has a lot of merit and is well worth trying out, just to see what effect it has.
