Identifying a Ban trigger

[CurtisS]

This may have been asked before (I did use the Search function but found nothing useful) but is there a way to find out which Ban entry was triggered when looking at listings in the Ban log? This could be useful to know when investigating whether or not I am banning access to valid IPs. All of my Ban entries are by domain such as *.ABC (I don't want to single out a particular domain here).
Thanks in advance.

CurtisS

[Kindred]

I don't believe that the triggering of a ban tracks WHICH specific trigger was targeted.  If it matters, then you would need to set up individual bans for each trigger you want tracked.

(to the best of my knowledge)

On the other hand --  if you have that many bans, the question becomes - WHY do you have that many?  Are you using Bans as an anti-spam measure?  If so, then you are doing it wrong...  banning spammers is the wrong way to deal with them. Delete their accounts flat out and then add the proper amount of protection on registering an account.  If you prevent the spammers from even registering in the first place, then you don't need bans for them.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I don't think we have a log that would present that in a simple way, but you can browse through the error logs and see the actual ban messages shown when a trigger is hit. They should get logged as errors.

[CurtisS]

On the other hand --  if you have that many bans, the question becomes - WHY do you have that many?  Are you using Bans as an anti-spam measure?  If so, then you are doing it wrong...  banning spammers is the wrong way to deal with them. Delete their accounts flat out and then add the proper amount of protection on registering an account.  If you prevent the spammers from even registering in the first place, then you don't need bans for them.

I may be going about it the wrong way but there are certain domains that are well known for being used by spammers. Even with the usual safeguards in place (Verification questions and Recaptcha) I was getting a lot of spammers  registering (our forum requires Admin approval) from these certain domains. It gets old looking at each IP with "Stop Forum Spam" to find out whether I should approve them or not. So I just banned these certain domains (or sub-domains) entirely. It has helped a lot but again maybe there is a better approach.
So my original question stems from me wanting to make sure I am not taking it too far.

**Edit** Just to clarify, I am banning certain domains by hostname or when used in the registering email address.

[Kindred]

And you don't need to.

You need better questions.

With stop spammer and 30 questions  (asking 2) I have had zero spam bots even register in 3+ years