XF 1.1 User Warning in XenForo 1.1

The XenForo 1.1 'warning' system allows board staff to handle trouble-making users in a structured and manageable way.

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Update, October 15 2011:
I've made some changes and improvements...
 
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i find the report queue to be less than ideal.
for one thing, once an item is 'resolved' it vanishes from the page and one must open the closed items page to view past reports. then one cannot simply reply to the report without needing to reopen it. there isnt (or wasnt in 104) an easy way to filter reports by reporter/reportee.
there is also no way to know that there is a discussion happening within a report without opening the queue. id like the ability to completely turn off the warning system as well, a la notifications.
i think that maybe it would be better to use prefixes (resolved, rejected, etc) now that they are available, and to allow followup comments to resolved reports without requiring them to be reopened. use the alert system to notify of followup comments to the queue, reports being reopened, etc.
that being said, the report queue isnt something i am worried about to the degree that i think it merits delaying 1.1. the actual warning system is another story though.
 
Brogan said:
I disagree.

The Reported Items function works great and is far better than having a forum and threads.
Click to expand...

For clarification: I have not used xenforos internal report center. I will look into that soon - possibly in a live environment :)

Suggestion: (option) Give the user a feedback. Users take their free time to report a post on an environment they are not responsible for. A short feedback "Thanks for the report, we have solved it" or "could you describe what exactly you were reporting" would be a huge benefit. I have yet got answers to reports given here on xf it can be that this kind of interaction could be more improved, partially automated. The moderators work should always be automated so they can focus on content and not about clicking within back office systems.
 
Kier said:
I thought I'd post a little update - in response to requests and suggestions made here, I've made some changes to the warning handler.

The UI is now a little more manageable
View attachment 20123

You can now lock conversations when they are sent, and allow or prevent the recipient from adding extra users to the conversation
View attachment 20124

And there are now controls to allow the content to be (soft) deleted right from the warning UI.
View attachment 20125
Click to expand...

While you are cleaning the UI ... I really hate that if the warning type does not allow custom points and custom length, the option remains there.

I see that clicking on a warning type already changes the conversation template. It might not be that much work to hide the points options if it is disallowed.

I am setting up all my warnings to be a fixed points amount, without allowing the mods to be creative with the points value. Hence, it would be useful to not have that points textfield at all :)
 
It looks very nice and effective, but I also see some important points that could be improved.

  1. How does staff notice the more serious issues? Its needed that other moderators get notified or be aware by other methods about the more serious issues going on, or if certain users are receiving many warnings. Otherwise they are oblivious to those events. Especially on larger boards with many moderators this can become a serious issue.
  2. How does the warned user see post content when the post is deleted? Is the post content automatically included in the warning? I really think it should be.
  3. I assume that when banned, the user sees a ban reason. What ban reason does the banned user see, if he is banned due to warning point accumulation? Is that the reason for the latest warning, does it show all warnings or does it state something else?
  4. Are the number of warnings or warning points visible to moderators in postbit? This would help a lot with identifying problematic users, which aids moderators in tailoring their actions to the user.
A feature request that has proven to be very very effective:

Force the user to read the rules again, after receiving a warning. Preferably with a timer on the rules page.
 
Dean said:
...But all those things are not directly related to the Warning system, which seems nice enough to me with a few adjustments.

Moderators see the Warn link -> deals with the content directly, which is immediately associated with the user from their profile.
Non-moderators see the Report link -> makes a reported post, which can be dealt with by any of the proper moderators.

But ideally some adjustments could be made to the incredibly well designed Warning system (see earlier requests).
Click to expand...
I've absolutely no clue what I was thinking when I typed this - Just because someone has the permissions to Warn does not mean they are capable of dealing with whatever issue the post has. They may want to talk about the post with the other moderators.

The ability for moderators to Report posts really needs to always be there..
 
For those who want a Warn and Report link, this can be achieved with a simple template edit.

Open the post template and change this:
Code: 
<xen:if is="{$post.canWarn}">
    <a href="{xen:link members/warn, $post, 'content_type=post', 'content_id={$post.post_id}'}" class="item control warn"><span></span>{xen:phrase warn}</a>
<xen:elseif is="{$post.warning_id} && {$canViewWarnings}" />
    <a href="{xen:link warnings, $post}" class="OverlayTrigger item control viewWarning"><span></span>{xen:phrase view_warning}</a>
<xen:elseif is="{$post.canReport}" />
    <a href="{xen:link posts/report, $post}" class="OverlayTrigger item control report" data-cacheOverlay="false"><span></span>{xen:phrase report}</a>
</xen:if>

To this:
Code: 
<xen:if is="{$post.canReport}">
    <a href="{xen:link posts/report, $post}" class="OverlayTrigger item control report" data-cacheOverlay="false"><span></span>{xen:phrase report}</a>
</xen:if>
<xen:if is="{$post.canWarn}">
    <a href="{xen:link members/warn, $post, 'content_type=post', 'content_id={$post.post_id}'}" class="item control warn"><span></span>{xen:phrase warn}</a>
<xen:elseif is="{$post.warning_id} && {$canViewWarnings}" />
    <a href="{xen:link warnings, $post}" class="OverlayTrigger item control viewWarning"><span></span>{xen:phrase view_warning}</a>
</xen:if>

The end result is this:
private-controls.webp


I'll probably be implementing that for my own site as we use Report to discuss problem posts, which we can no longer do now.
 
Alfa1 said:
It looks very nice and effective, but I also see some important points that could be improved.

  1. How does staff notice the more serious issues? Its needed that other moderators get notified or be aware by other methods about the more serious issues going on, or if certain users are receiving many warnings. Otherwise they are oblivious to those events. Especially on larger boards with many moderators this can become a serious issue.
  2. How does the warned user see post content when the post is deleted? Is the post content automatically included in the warning? I really think it should be.
  3. I assume that when banned, the user sees a ban reason. What ban reason does the banned user see, if he is banned due to warning point accumulation? Is that the reason for the latest warning, does it show all warnings or does it state something else?
  4. Are the number of warnings or warning points visible to moderators in postbit? This would help a lot with identifying problematic users, which aids moderators in tailoring their actions to the user.
A feature request that has proven to be very very effective:

Force the user to read the rules again, after receiving a warning. Preferably with a timer on the rules page.
Click to expand...

Alfa, although I see you have good intentions, I sense some overengineering there, and that could steer the feature to be a simple, easy to use thing, and could easily turn in an overdesigned, feature-creep feature instead.

1. The warnings are not a substitute for your regular communications. If you have a big issue, I think either the moderators would have to start a private conversation, or you would have a private forum where they can talk, or they can ping each other through IM. But certainly, I do not expect the warnings to be a substitute for that. I would, however suggest that, when creating the conversation it could aut0-include admins or maybe other mods...

2. In the same way that they see post content right now when it is deleted ... they can't. They wrote it, so they might remember the content. If they don't remember it, they can always send you a PM, right ? I don't see the need to make the warnings big and ugly with lots of information

3. Most probably "you received a lot of warnings" is enough for the ban reason. Someone could code in minutes a mod to display all the warnings in the banned message screen if you really wanted to do so .. I don't think there is a good solution for this. The banned screen could display the latest warning, but that's it. To tell you the truth, I don't see this as a big issue. They are banned and that's it, I don't like wasting my time with people that are out.

4. Already covered. It is not in the postbit, but click on the warning icon on the right and yes, you can see that information
 
I think efficiency is important. Features that increase efficiency & reduce workload are very welcome IMO.

Please see this post I wrote out: A breakdown of lacking admin/mod tools and why this can force admins to give up.
It relates to vbulletin, but many points are also valid for XF, because XF is following a similar design for warnings. That post resulted in a very large number of reputation ratings, as it describes issues that admins frequently encounter.

1. About every major forum out there has a forum or thread in the staff zone dedicated to the discussion of worrisome members. It has been established in several discussions on admin sites, that most admins of larger / active sites find this ineffective and situations can easily be overlooked. Especially when you have a lot of staff. Its important that the whole staff is aware about problematic situations. If a moderator fails to post about it, then no one else will know.

2. vbulletin quotes the offending posts when a warning is sent. This avoids a lot of questions about it. If you are setting someone straight, its important that the user fully understands what you are talking about. Otherwise it just adds to the workload. And unneeded communication about warnings invites discussion about the validity.

3. Its only logical that the ban message should clearly describes why the user is banned. I'd be perfectly happy with 'you received a lot of warnings'. The reason behind this question is that we frequently get support tickets from banned users who were banned because of accumulation of infraction points and have a ban message that states a trivial reason.

4. Warning points in postbit is something I could easily add myself. I want my moderators to be instantly aware who they are talking to.
 
Feature or Add-on Request: In addition to PM'ing the user, it would be good if the summary of actions could be added to an existing thread since most of us have a staff action thread like others mentioned. Not a big deal if its missing, but would be a cool extra to have. May think about coding one as an addon. Time to brush off those php skills.
 
We use the report feature to bring discussions to the attention of the team, because of the red alert in the mod bar.
The warning system takes that away. A solution would be 'latest warnings', allowing the team to discuss a situation.

The old fashioned way was to create new threads for each thing, but that's old-fashioned.
 
Floris said:
The old fashioned way was to create new threads for each thing, but that's old-fashioned.
Click to expand...
yes, it is old fashioned.
i see many people are wanting to use that old-fashioned system still, but i am convinced it would be better to instead refine the report system to include the features/advantages of a 'staff forum'.
 
The advantage of a thread in a staff forum is that you can keep a running topic of things and there's no looking for anything. Open to better idea's but simple works.
 
dieketzer said:
yes, it is old fashioned.
i see many people are wanting to use that old-fashioned system still, but i am convinced it would be better to instead refine the report system to include the features/advantages of a 'staff forum'.
Click to expand...
There are certainly enough people asking for thread creation for reported posts, it seems logical to have an option to me...
 
dieketzer said:
yes, it is old fashioned.
i see many people are wanting to use that old-fashioned system still, but i am convinced it would be better to instead refine the report system to include the features/advantages of a 'staff forum'.
Click to expand...
I would like having both and even consider combining them, I like the fact that reports/warnings have a formal procedure in XF, but I also like that a thread is created to discuss them in vB.
 
Sorry, maybe someone has alearedy asked about this...

Can we have (can you implement this in 1.1.0 stable) groupped warnings (like groupped thread prefixes)? So admin can create some warning groups (e.g. light warnings, serious warnings and so on)? This could be useful for moderators, if there are lots of warnings defined...
 

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