Stopping the spammer

Please don't interact with him.  That just feeds the troll.  If nobody pays any attention to him except for staff/mods closing his account, eventually it will cease to be fun for him and he'll get bored and stop.

I did, and thanks to Martin_Stahl, all of the spammer's recently used accounts were closed.  However, this didn't happen until after the spammer had already spammed for 50 mins, and he'll probably have 10 new accounts tomorrow.  It's not fast enough to stop him.  What I'm campaigning for is to have more live chess mods, such as myself, so that the spammer can be stopped immediately.

If you want chess.com to listen to you, you need more people backing your ideas. Chess.com won't respond to something only one person wants, so if you want to be considered, get some public support backing you and they might just listen.

true. 

You're right, I should circulate a petition or start a group, or start linking to this thread from live chat, and then chess.com would be more likely to listen.

But on the other hand, here's how I feel.  This is a problem with chess.com that I am offering to solve.  It's a huge, recurrent pain in my butt, and in everybody else's who hangs out in live chat.  Everybody in the chat complains about this guy and talks about reporting+blocking him.  I could provide chat logs the next time he spams, or the mods could simply look in the chat to see the situation.  The mods have undoubtedly received tons of reports from many different people about this guy, and it should be abundantly clear that current methods are not stopping him.  Why is the burden on me to start a petition, why doesn't chess.com take responsibility for problems with their own site, and take steps to solve them?  I should hope that simply making chess.com *aware* of the scale of the problem, through this thread, should be enough for them to desire a solution.

Part of me doesn't want to link to a petition etc. in chat, because the spammer would see that too and it just gives him more attention, which is what he wants.  I don't know what I'll do.

The problem is that there aren't enough moderators to be constantly watching chat.  And recruiting a huge number of moderators has a cost too, as somebody has to train them and then monitor them to ensure they're using their abilities responsibly.

Did you apply to be a moderator, and have you heard back yet?  Things are slower over the weekend, so it may take a little longer than normal.

IP ban?

and chess.com should really have a VPN/Proxy blocker to stop bypassing IP bans. 

IP bans are pretty easy to circumvent, and VPNs and proxies are not the only method.  Depending on how your ISP assigns IP addresses, simply restarting your router might get you a new IP address.  Or you could simply walk down to your local cafe and use their wifi.  IP bans can also catch innocent people, since they affect everyone using the same internet connection - for example, if you IP ban someone using a school internet connection, you could catch an entire school chess club.  And in some parts of the world, an entire city might be behind a shared gateway and so share an IP address.

Also, VPNs and proxies have many legitimate uses, and blocking them would cause problems for a lot of innocent people, and anyway, while you could identify and block many of the more common ones, you can't block them all.

Chess.com does use IP bans, and there are some other tools too, but those can be circumvented by those who know how.  Generally, the best way to crack down on this kind of thing is restrictions on new accounts - which isn't a great welcoming experience for legitimate new members - or just keep playing whackamole until he gets bored and decides to cause trouble on another site.

Well it would block a lot of people, a router usually works to "remember" IP's so restarting it usually won't do much. Not a lot of people are willing to go to their local coffee shop every time they want to post something on the forums. 

But blocking all VPNs isn't even possible, and even if it was, you'd catch a lot of innocent people.

If China decided to block chess.com like they block most other foreign social media, the only way Chinese people could access the site would be via a VPN.

No, it's really not. The members that do that either post really inappropriate things or spam walls of text making meaningful conversation impossible.

The site is not banning someone doing it once or twice for a lark.

The majority of people around the world dont own credit cards. A certain percentage of world population don't even have a bank. 

Please dont discriminate poor people. Poor people would like to play chess too, they also would like to enjoy their life too.

Ok, that is not really what he means. He is just saying that that is the only reasonable way to prevent the spammer. Stop being offended by everything and assuming what people are saying. 

Could be going on a limb but I suspect that people with no access to credit cards, banks, money, etc..may not be accessing the internet to play chess.

And furthermore, may not even know about or be focused on chess. Possibly at least. 

Well, you don't have premium, so...

Not really!

For example, a lot chinese people dont use the bank, but they use " We Chat"  to transfer money to someone else, pay the bills etc.

There are also telephone service providers that serve similar financial services ( you buy credits from retail shops then use that credits to similar financial services).

yeah!!!

The guy's still at it, nothing has been done.