MyBB Community Forums

Test newly created Usernames against "Reserved" Bot Aliases

As the title suggests, it would be a good idea if it was possible for the core software to test newly created username's against the botname's that have been added in the administration panel. While indeed there is a slight difference in the cosmetics of how a name is applied (italic and not coloured/linked to a profile) there is still the potential for people to use the same names as the bots that frequent a forum.

While this might indeed seem minor, it could very easily be used for grieving and be overlooked by those staffing a forum. If they are use to seeing a bot name and it's something that's allowed on the site by the administrator they might not question if it suddenly starts posting.

Any thoughts?

(2014-11-25, 06:10 PM)stryderunknown Wrote: [ -> ]there is still the potential for people to use the same names as the bots that frequent a forum.

And there always will be, MyBB can't do anything to prevent banning people who are using bot-like names - no way to detect that. You can always start using other preventions like Stop Forum Spam.

@Destroy666 I think you did not get the suggestion^^ What is suggested is a check against the bots registered as bots (Admin CP > Configuration > Spiders / Bots), to prevent users from faking posts from bots, that should only be allowed to crawl the public areas of the forum.

Still doesn't make any sense for me, it's not possible to fake the spiders since they never post, so it would be quite obvious that the posters are not Google, Bing or whatever.. First time I see someone complaining about that.

(2014-11-26, 10:32 PM)Destroy666 Wrote: [ -> ]Still doesn't make any sense for me, [...]

For me neither... just wanted to make the idea clear

Typically you have maybe 10 bots / spiders registered there - one could easily add them to the disallowed usernames by hand...