@captainawkwardpants - I wouldn’t say moderators “turn a blind eye” to trolls. In fact, we discuss them a lot! It’s difficult when you know someone is trolling, but they haven’t slipped up. For example, they announce the birth of triplets with fantastical names, but there’s no concrete evidence that they’re a troll. The last thing we want to do is ban or suspend genuine members. The idea of banning or suspending is fine (and members have been banned or suspended in the past), but trolls usually come back under different names, so it’s not a particularly effective practise. I think Nameberry has been very clear that teenagers are more than welcome on our boards and there are dedicated areas for people to play naming games if they wish to. I understand trolls are incredibly annoying and difficult to deal with. Honestly, I don’t think there’s any right answer. They will always be there. We just have to be vigilant and hopefully catch them out before they cause too much damage.
Sarahmezz, that’s definitely fair. I didn’t mean to say that you guys were actively turning a blind eye to fakers - I was responding more to the suggestion that people should just ignore/play along with trolls because, “Who cares? People will fake on the internet no matter what!” Probably shouldn’t have tied the mods into that sentence. Sorry about that!
At the risk of being nosy, does Nameberry have the option to ban a troll/faker’s IP address, rather than just the username? I know most forums I visit will resort to that when a member’s being especially persistent in rejoining. And on that note, is there any way of determining whether one person (email address, IP address, I’m not sure?) is using multiple accounts? I imagine a lot of fakers make a new account once they have their pretend-babies and tire of that particular pretend-family.
Again, sorry if this is all too nosy. I’ve been a lurker for quite a while now, and just thought I’d throw some ideas out there.
Yep, exactly this. Also, Nameberry has only just acquired it’s first dedicated moderation team (alongside the admin) so we haven’t had much time to crack down on trolls anyway.
And like [name_f]Sarah[/name_f] said, we have to wait for someone to slip up before we can ban them or report them to the admin.
When has this happened? O_o
Sorry didn’t see this. Yes there should be a way of doing that.
Other than it being annoying and causing unbalanced statistics, I don’t really see why it’s as big of a deal as it is. I mean, at least the trolls can be slightly entertaining with their laughable name choices, right?
I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing something. I do think it’s annoying that people would lie about it, but I don’t really see a point in getting upset over it. Trolls are a given on any website, so I just kind of ignore it. Getting people riled up like this is their goal, isn’t it?
I mean, I’m 16, so no babies and none in the next few years, but I don’t see why I’d post a fake birth announcement…It just seems pointless to me. Like, I COULD do that…Or I could go play a [name_u]Baby[/name_u] Name Game, which is funner. Granted, I have used a pregnancy tracker site before to track a fake pregnancy, but then, I stayed away from forums and didn’t really do anything other than read the “Your baby is now the size of a peach!” updates. I just thought it was interesting. Does that count? If so, I’m sorry - I didn’t really think it’d be a problem.
All in all, my philosophy is that trolls suck and they’re wasting their time, so why should I waste mine caring about them?
Hello everybody,
I’m administrator of a Belgian name forum and there we also had a fake mom that faked a triplet. Although we have ‘only’ 50 members.
It’s really pity that some people do this!!
I never “announced” our daughter’s name one here but I just wanted to point out that her hospital band said “Babygirl T(ourlastname)” so that wouldn’t really prove anything. And I agree it is super easy to photoshop. I think you really have to just go by honor system here and realize that, like all things online, there will be some fakery taking place. Everything with a grain of salt so to speak.
I also don’t know if Multiples are a good way of Screening Trolls.
As SarahMezz can verify, we have 3 sets of BOY Twins on the Momberries forum “Babies [name_u]January[/name_u] - [name_u]March[/name_u] 2014”
And since we all share so much, we obviously aren’t trolls. I think Multiples are more common now, and I think Trolls are out there. But that wouldn’t stop me from reading a Multiples announcement. I am always curious to see how they’ve been named.
I don’t think sharing a lot of information automatically means you’re not a troll (I don’t mean you, I mean that as a general ‘you’). People can get their information from friends or family that are pregnant.
Agreed. In my experience, trolls are almost MORE likely to share. People who have actual families might be concerned about privacy and keep personal things to themselves (because they actually HAPPENED, so why share them on a baby names forum?) - whereas people who’ve created fictional families want to share every little detail they’ve imagined, and get attention/congratulations for every pretend event. Not to mention, a lot of fakes think that the more they share, the more ‘real’ they seem. And what’s the sense in making a fake family if it’s not exciting, right?
[name_m]Just[/name_m] as a disclaimer, I am NOT saying that people who share a lot about themselves are fakers. I tend to over share, myself (though I’m far from exciting)! I’ve just seen that idea a lot, and wanted to clear it up. 
Is there not a fake baby announcement thread now?
So sad and frustrating 
I enjoy reading the announcements to see what people REALLY settled on. I think it’s fun to get super fancy in the planning stages… but in the end I think most of us choose more run of the mill names.
As far as the multiple-births thing (I have one daughter-no sons) I think it makes sense that the nameberry population has a much greater incidence of multiples than the general population. I imagine finding out that you are having twins or triplets would send you straight to a naming website, since most people have a hard time naming even one.
The trolling thing is disappointing. I think there should be a thread for the “imaginary family” so people can explore their naming creativity