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 .
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:
Aside from the 'delete as spam' function, the above actions are not integrated at all.
- Post reports, VM reports, blog reports, PM reports need to be reviewed.
- Content needs to be deleted/edited/moved.
- Warnings or explanations need to be posted in threads
- Infractions/Infractions need to be given.
- Feedback needs to go to the reporter.
- Reports need to be classifying as solved somehow.
- A conversation with the infracted member may follow.
- User notes need to be posted on profile.
- Staff needs to made aware of / discuss troublesome or important members.
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:
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.
- 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.
- Moderators should get a notice the number of open post reports they have. The post reports they need to process should be visible somewhere.
- 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.
- 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.
- Infractions should have canned texts (like promised by Jelsoft many moons ago)
- If members receive multiple infractions within a short period or if ranking members get severe infraction, this should create an alert to the staff.
- Reporting members should get a status report about their report.
- Private Messages reports should have infraction functions.
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.
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 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.I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions
I find it interesting that the biggest forum on Earth (Facebook) ... needs zero moderators and zero infractions
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.
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.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 .
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