What can be done to avoid multi-nick/transporting flame wars and banhammering purges again and again?  Too much of a burden is put on moderators who don't even curl !  They need better tools.

IP addresses and chatter are already logged.  We just need to make better use of these.

Data from logs fed into databases:

Relate IP address to nicks;

Any player may login from different locations (work, home, cafe, in transit, etc).  Most of these different addresses will be constant over weeks and months. Any nick may have multiple addresses related to it and vice-versa. Store, update, refresh and use! that info.

Relate chatter to nicks;

If we find that multiple nicks use the same (static) IP, we then use chatter to determine if one or more people are behind these persona.
Most of us repeatedly use the same greetings and abbreviations.  We make the same comments, in the same languages, making the same typos and misspellings.  Even smileys will make good data.  It shouldn't take overly large samples to attain ~90% certainty that any two nicks are the same person or not.

http://evllabs.com/jgaap/w

For privacy and efficiency concerns, word/phrase hashes and frequency metrics should replace raw text for longer term storage.  Every "potential" multi-nick will in short time have a "chatter signature".  Or better yet; a chatter signature for every potential multi at every static IP.

This should sniff-out "account sharing".  If some nick's "chatter signature" is different at some IP address, the mismatched signature will likely match some other nick's at that other address!

Combining this data with abuse reports will make operators jobs easier and eliminate a lot of uncertainty frustration and friction for everyone.

Transporting begone!