Bumping an old topic here.
We have constant issues with blocked misbehaving users coming back with a new account. We are virtually defenceless agains them, as they are not technically identified. Most of our users are not tech savvy people, so even my proposal of cookie tagging would be an asset.
- More the 50% of users surf on mobile (global trend, increasing). IPs vary wildly and NAT is used on operator level.
- 4G LTE based broadband modems are rapidly increasing too, as operators like to sell them rather than cable (cheaper infra maintenance cost). Again, IP changes rapidly.
- Email service providers allow creation of aliases, so that wont stop them.
To summarize, people love our community but misbehaviour is not uncommon and we have to remove noisy individuals to keep the overall experience clean. Only a couple of active yet poorly behaving users are able to crap in every hot thread of the moment, ruining the flows of conversation very quickly.
I would love to see this as a key developement feature sooner than later. The impact is huge on the overall community experience - much more significant than certain technical or UX improvements (which are cool too, of course). Content is king.