Option to ban an IP

option to ignore IP too would be useful too because spammers also change nicknames

As a long time-user/donor since the earliest incarnations of SLSK I will not defend banning IP's for the following scenario:

Sure there are a few freeloaders and spammers out there. I am NOT one of them. On average I'm sharing {non-userlist!} anywhere between 7000-20,000+ mp3's with a correctly configured router/firewall/etc. People increasingly over the years will ban you for downloading (1) folder with no excessive amount of files enclosed, say 30-40 mp3's. >>>Even when following their own rules/user info which reads "only one folder at a time."<<<

To combat these unreasonable a**holes I fully support the log-out-relog-back-in-as-a-different username to complete the single file/small folder for which I was ridiculously banned without any explanation(s). Especially if this file/folder is rare and cannot be found amongst other users month after wishlist month. It is my duty as a SoulSeeker to bypass their non-sharing selfishness at all costs...even if I have to keep relogging a different name each day until every single megabyte is finished.

Banning IP's an option?!? What a retarded proposition/question. Absolutely NOT. The username blocking works just fine thank you very much!

In Phex, client of the Gnutella network, was implemented the following possibilities:
Right-click on the name of the user, and choose from the following options. 1) Ban for this session 2) Ban for a week 3) Ban forever.
If we want, we can exclude the third option ....
:)

This is obviously a hot potato subject. I have seen and read much of the pro-ban lobby in this and other peer-2-peer forums, I dont think I have ever read some strong anti-banning offerings as I do here.
My feeling for what it's worth is that some control is neccessary if you are going to openly share all your collection, there are too many out there that forget the rules, expect to be able to grab (intentionally) whole folders and spoil it for the more reasonable user, these abusers need control, but I am not going to sit here watching everything going on, just to prevent leeching or excessive downloading, I do it simply by giving everyone a chance, if they have something useful they go in my user list, if they have no shares at all, then I take it that they either do not have anything to share, or have screwed up their sharing, just booted up etc, allow one track, then message them, no reply, then they are simply banned, to await their comment. A reply with a good reason, like At work cant share on the company PC, then I might let them have an album, but point out to them the whole purpose of Soulseek is to share BOTH ways. Other than that, I usually run List only, but will always add anyone I download from to my list. That way I feel free from the irksome leeches, and get few problems from the far east CD makers looking for stock. !!

I'd like to see an option to ignore IPs.

This can get DANGEROUS.

As IPs can be shared as well, it can mean that if you ban a certain IP, you might ban 50-ish innocent folks in the process. You think I'm kidding? NO! This was an issue multiple times on Wikipedia, when innocent people got banned because ONE vandalist's IP was banned. However, this IP belonged to a whole cluster of machines in a 5-mile district!
So you'd better be careful out there...

To another topic: (@tr0ndisc)
"To combat these unreasonable a**holes I fully support the log-out-relog-back-in-as-a-different username to complete the single file/small folder for which I was ridiculously banned without any explanation(s)."

OHH YES. Some often ban you "just because" you do not have the kind of style on-line that *they* want. So if do not have the lucky chance to have something that the user wants, you get locked out by a band. Great dudes.
But you can detect them easily: most can't spell English properly, commonly writing "lyk" this:

" sry m8 but ur files make no sence to me thats teh point. i baned u bcuz ur stuf is purty shite. so if u fink u got too dl from me then share smin from my style i want ffs "

THAT is what Google Translate should finally implement! Fu*kwit<->English translation! :P

Banning is definately overused, and having silly rules like not being allowed to queue more than 100MB or more than 2 songs is just plain ridiculous. If there were a proper system in place it wouldn't be so bad, but if you happen to queue 1 album that happens to be over 100MB you're banned oO

What might be nicer and might appeal to those with such silly rules, is having an option to stall uploads when there are others that want to download as well. That way the downloaders still get their files, and the uploaders share with more than just one user. This is assuming that this is the reasons those silly rules are in place, and not because they just want to be asshats. If you don't want your files to be downloaded, don't share them publicly, use some common sense (sadly that happens way too often, certainly on the Internet...).

On a sidenote, dynamic IP's will circumvent IP bans anyway, and I don't know if TOR is allowed here, but that's one other easy way to go around it, it's not really the greatest idea no matter how I look at it.

Another option could be to have an option to limit the speed of the "offenders" of such rule, while having non-offenders have the majority of your (allowed) bandwidth.

At the above post: crap English is sadly all too common on the Internet as well. It's not like you have a limited amount of characters to type with or that messages are limited in characters (up to a point) that one has to type like that. Very annoying to read, mostly on forums though, I don't mind as much on IM or IM-like things. (Especially using "u" instead of "you" and "2" instead of "too" and so on annoy the crap out of me, IM or otherwise.)

no this would no be usefull soulseek is for sharing not for leeching

That sounds good in theory but I am afraid some users would abuse this feature.

Ban by IP = No, that's just insane. Sometimes leechers could become good shaerers.

However option to IPignore is extremely needed. Often times people spam chatrooms with links, quotes, etc. Not to mention same users spamming your inbox promoting stuff of theirs on different names daily. I don't want to click yes or no to allow people all the time and I don't want to turn off private messages off in general. So please impliment ip ignore.

I am all for the selective banning options (ban for session, ban for week, etc) but not permanently. I have tried messaging users to get them to share, People just message back saying "F you!!" and stuff like that, and still don't share.. But i do believe having the ability to ban leechers and a**holes temporarily would go a long way to resolving these leeching/spamming issues. For instance, I had some downloads waiting for the last 3 days.. I checked this morning and a bunch are now listed as "Banned", I sent the guy a message asking why he banned me from downloading and he basically said "F you"... That comeback apparently never gets old... But since he's not sharing with me, i'd like to ban him, because he's currently uploading about 7 albums from me, while banning me from downloading from him... So please, include a ban ability to some extent. And to force people to share, can't you make download speeds correlational to the amount of files ppl share?.. So if they are sharing a few junk files, they can't actually download ANYTHING from ANYONE until they add over 100 song files to their shared folder. And then scale it from there.. The more files shared, the faster you can download. for example, 1000 shared files = 5 kb/s. 5000 shared files = 20 kb/s. 10000 shared files = 100 kb/s.. and so on... And most ppl who don't share simply have no clue how to use the program, so a tutorial upon first launch showing people how to set up their shared folder would possibly help too. Just my 2 cents...