Does banning a username actually do anything?

[Captain Needy]

I have been learning a lot about deleting accounts and banning lately.  One thing I am trying to figure out is why banning a username seems to do nothing.  I have certain entities that create the same account over and over again and I IP ban and ban the verious domains in their email address but it would be nice if I could just prevent them from creating that account name.  It seems like ticking the box for username should do this for me but it doesn't. 

It seems curious to me that I go to ban a given account and get an error message that say 'a ban already exists for this username'.  If a ban exists for that username then why were they able to create an account for it? 

[Arantor]

Do you delete the user?

[Captain Needy]

I think I have tried it both ways, but most often I would delete the user, yes.  Because my impression was that it is saving the ban trigger somewhere else and checking against that. 

[Arantor]

Deleting the user also deletes the ban trigger.

You might instead try adding it under reserved names in the admin panel.

[Captain Needy]

Thank you very much. That gives me a new plan of defense for today.  I appreciate it.  (will report back my results (also trying out registration questions today)). 

[Kindred]

If you are dealing with spammers, then banning is the wrong way to deal with it.
Stopping them from logging in/registering in the first place is the best thing.

See the faq topic

[Captain Needy]

Thank you Kindred.  I am reading up on that presently.

[Captain Needy]

I have added a bunch of registration questions.

I am cautiously beginning to believe this could work. 

[GigaWatt]

You might also want to read up on this.

https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=531660.msg3776163#msg3776163