Discipline / Infraction System

[Forsaken]

I prefer to contact the member directly, as it seems more expedient, and more likely that they're going to listen.

I would however want a way to log when I have warned a member (directly), so that it could be tracked by other staff.

 

[Erik]

Agreed. Especially if you are on a large forum, and you happen to come across a particular delinquent user, you have no real way of telling what they've done in the past aside from using User Notes. The other nice thing about an infraction system is it allows members to see how close they are to getting banned. Rather than the process being entirely subjective to a particular angry moderator or administrator, a good deal of the banning is handed directly over to the forum software. It's much easier to tell someone, "Well, you broke rules x, y, and z thus reaching H number of points" then try to justify their ban over someone who maybe was not banned for something similar.

Different administrators, different ways to run things, but I like organization .

Totally agree.

 

[Brandon_R]

Directly contacting the member and sorting it out is the better way which could lessen posts about infractions and complaining *take a look at digitalpoint forums, it's a mess.

Just getting an infraction saying you did something wrong really won't do any good and it will just make the member do more bad.

 

[Shamil]

On the forums I administer, the first thing staff are advised to do is to contact the member. Then after the second incident, a yellow card would be issued. After that, then a red card would be issued. However, this sequence only happens within the period state of 30 days, and also, the same offence must be committed.

 

[digitalpoint]

While sitting down with a user individually to have a "chat" about what they did wrong is nice in theory (and something we preferred when we were small), it's not practical for a large forum. The larger you get, you get exponentially more spam.

We get around 500 new users per day and ~10,000 new posts per day... our custom code kills around 50 new user accounts the instant they sign up (before they post) and also shuts down PM usage automatically the instant someone spams a PM.

I hate to say it, but the vBulletin infraction system was a Godsend for us as far as keeping a historical record of what rules the user has broken over time. Without the infraction system we probably would have given up trying to fight spammers (or developed something like it ourselves at least).

264,530 infractions logged to date. Not sure if I should laugh or cry about that.

 

[ENF]

Don't have the time at the moment to really throw my own opinions out here, but I pretty much echo digitalpoint's post full on. We cannot take the time to speak to each user directly nor do we have time to answer all of the emails. The infractions system works well in addition to user notes. The volume of posts and users we manage is not that of dp's but it's enough to easily overwhelm the staff we do have.

 

[Safin]

Throwing my weight behind having an infraction system too. Sorting out issues with members directly is indeed the best thing to do but only on smaller forums. As Mr_Bob said above, on a larger forum, an infraction system is the only way possible for staff to know the past history of the user in question and frankly the volunteer staff has no time going through the individual pm's or trying to sort out the problems with members. An infraction is quick fire way to let the member know where he did wrong and also to keep track of all his past wrongs.

 

[Sami]

Not sure I follow all the way. Spammers don't need discipline. It's like taking out the garbage.

 

[Alpha1]

I really wouldnt know how to run a high traffic board without an infraction system. We used to have long threads in the staff forum, listing members and what they had done or why they needed to be watched. That simply isnt possible when you need to warn and infract many times a day and when your staff grows large.

And user notes on vb profiles are useless when you have over 10.000 members. Try to remember that there was a note posted at a certain profile with those numbers. It doesnt alert the staff of anything and isnt accessible anywhere but profile.

We need a member tracking system, so that staff can easily bring a troublesome or rising member to the attention of the rest of the staff. Most sites have a thread in the staff forum that alerts about troublesome members.

A warning and infraction system should be integrated with post reports. Post reports lead to a number of different staff actions, including deletion, moving, spam cleanup, warning/infracting, notifying the staff about the issue and giving feedback to the reporter.

This consumes a major amount of time every day. If this can be streamlined, then this would save a lot of time and make life so much easier. Its things like this that really start to become problematic once your site grows large and active. Workload and workflow can easily become to much to handle, if the system is not effective.

Here is a writeup relating to vbulletin about the matter. Most of it applies to how XenForo could work effectrively:

Reports & infractions
The way reports and infractions work cause a lot of work, because there is no logical work flow and UX. Currently reports can lead to the following actions that staff needs to take:

1. Post reports, VM reports, blog reports, PM reports need to be reviewed.
2. Content needs to be deleted/edited/moved.
3. Warnings or explanations need to be posted in threads
4. Infractions/Infractions need to be given.
5. Feedback needs to go to the reporter.
6. Reports need to be classifying as solved somehow.
7. A conversation with the infracted member may follow.
8. User notes need to be posted on profile.
9. Staff needs to made aware of / discuss troublesome or important members.

Aside from the 'delete as spam' function, the above actions are not integrated at all.


Reports can be automatically posted to a staff zone forum or emailed. Moderators can not see in vbulletins front end how many open reports are assigned to them. They should be confronted with this information somehow, so that its clear what reports they need to solve.

These reports should get a status, so everyone can see what's going on.

Multiple reports by ranking members (user groups) should send a post to the moderation queue.

I suggested the following improvements here: an overhaul and integration of the report system, infraction system, user note system:

1. The post report screen should have a drop down with reasons for the post report. These could correspond with those set in the infraction system.
2. Moderators should get a notice the number of open post reports they have. The post reports they need to process should be visible somewhere.
3. When assessing the problem, moderators should have the option to post a user note, which would be visible in the staff zone as a threaded content. But accessible on user profile and in the thread.
4. Moderators should also have the option to warn or infract, while the reason is pre-set with the reason the reporting member selected. Moderators should have the option to select another infraction reason.
5. Infractions should have canned texts (like promised by Jelsoft many moons ago)
6. If members receive multiple infractions within a short period or if ranking members get severe infraction, this should create an alert to the staff.
7. Reporting members should get a status report about their report.
8. Private Messages reports should have infraction functions.

There is no way to post a thread notice, so a warning in a post can quickly get buried and needs to be repeated several times.


There is no way to flag posts as problematic, except by posting a link in the staff zone.


Moderated content & moderation
Staff needs to approve all moderated content. Yet we need to look up if there is any moderated content in their userCP. There should be a notification in the front end, as soon as any moderated content enters the system.

There is no way of knowing what content has been read by staff and what content has not. This allows problematic content to stay under the radar, while other content may be reviewed by 10 moderators.

There should be a post or thread note function that allows staff to add comments to posts, only for staff to see.


Member tracking
User Notes are only accessible on user profiles. They are mostly forgotten and not used, because no one will see the user note, unless it is specifically looked up. Instead many boards use one or more staff discussion threads to post notes about members. Its extremely hard to track the behaviour of members on a busy site.

There should be a wall of user notes, with functionality for staff to post to the wall. Optimally there should be a positive and a negative wall. Such walls should be accessible in a staff zone.

 

[captainslater]

I think some kind of Karma mod would be nice.
Sadly you'll find everywhere some guys who can't use these systems in a proper manner.

 

[Erik]

Digitalpoint makes an excellent point - an infraction system is going to be necessary if XF is going to be adopted by large boards.

 

[ChipTz]

Totally agree with the point made by digitalpoint and others on the same line, I can't run my board without it, my mods would for sure quit the day after, altough we prefer talking and explaining users it is impossible to do that in a forum with 60 new users per day and 4000 posts per day, besids that the infraction system is the best way to have a common criteria across all mods when they have to act against a user, and to track everything.

We have 40.000 entries and I can also quote digitalpoint by saying I don't know wether to cry or to smile...

The infraction system generates probably more conflits but if you had canned responses to it (missing on vB4 and requested a lot of times) it will get them more personal

 

[Greg]

The history definitely makes the infractions useful. I also like the fact that it automagically generates a staff thread to discuss the infraction if necessary. I can deal with doing away with the points system (I know at "my" board we use it a bit loosely) it's still convenient for providing users with a sense that the little things add up.

Oh, that reminds me. Can we store expired bans in user profiles?

 

[James]

Further echoing Digitalpoint's post here. If you're aiming XF to work with large boards then some kind of punishment system is a must-have. My logical structure on vBulletin is PM (+ usernote), warning, infraction and this works perfectly fine.

I'd love for me and my moderators to be able to deal with users on a one-to-one basis but it just isn't practical when administrators are busy as it is!

 

[GodForum.com]

While sitting down with a user individually to have a "chat" about what they did wrong is nice in theory (and something we preferred when we were small), it's not practical for a large forum. The larger you get, you get exponentially more spam.

We get around 500 new users per day and ~10,000 new posts per day... our custom code kills around 50 new user accounts the instant they sign up (before they post) and also shuts down PM usage automatically the instant someone spams a PM.

I hate to say it, but the vBulletin infraction system was a Godsend for us as far as keeping a historical record of what rules the user has broken over time. Without the infraction system we probably would have given up trying to fight spammers (or developed something like it ourselves at least).

264,530 infractions logged to date. Not sure if I should laugh or cry about that.

I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions

 

[James]

I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions

I find it interesting that you came to this conclusion with the amount of reports that users must send in to Facebook. I can't see support (what support) dealing with them.
As for infractions, they just disable your account -.-
Regardless of Facebook, I believe forums need disciplinary measures, especially large ones.

 

[Erik]

I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions

First of all, most of what is posted on Facebook is between you and your friends. You don't spam someone who's your friend, you don't flame each other, and if you do get into an argument you mostly work it out yourselves. The fact that you have a real identity on Facebook and all of your real-life friends see what you post prevents people from doing things that would get them banned, etc. The way the system works spammers, trolls, etc. typically don't get through to the average user. Secondly, I can guarantee you there are tons of Facebook personnel dedicated to cleaning things up. They just work behind the scenes.

 

[Forsaken]

I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions

There aren't moderators, but there are people who do monitor reports.

 

[Disjunto]

There aren't moderators, but there are people who do monitor reports.

and bans being handed out all over the place

 

[Wired]

Especially if you are on a large forum, and you happen to come across a particular delinquent user, you have no real way of telling what they've done in the past aside from using User Notes. The other nice thing about an infraction system is it allows members to see how close they are to getting banned. Rather than the process being entirely subjective to a particular angry moderator or administrator, a good deal of the banning is handed directly over to the forum software. It's much easier to tell someone, "Well, you broke rules x, y, and z thus reaching H number of points" then try to justify their ban over someone who maybe was not banned for something similar.

Different administrators, different ways to run things, but I like organization .

On multiple sites I help mod/admin, they use the infractions to allow mods to instant ban spammers. The infractions get popped into a special forum and everyone's instantly aware of why the person was banned. However with the influx of these crazy phone spammers (only tweeenty dolla yall!!!) and each post getting reported by staff and the community alike, there's a lot of duplicate data sitting in those special forums.

If those reports / infractions sat in a special table, they could be shown to the staff in a more efficient manner (e.g. notification bars / pop ups vs. a sub forum you have to occasionally check), as well as a central location to track it all. Since mods can't hard delete posts on one forum, but admins can, it makes it a bit of a pain in the ass to combine the reported threads with the infractions, delete the duplicate posts, and then go to their profile to find / perm delete the posts. Could be a feature or a plugin to XF.