Banned Users and Warning Points Logged?

[Myke623]

When users are either banned, or assigned Warning Points, do these events get logged at all?

In quickly looking at the available logs, they don't appear to be but in my opinion, they should. I've had an occasion where a user claims to have been banned, but there is no record showing it (is there?)

One possibility is that a Moderator momentarily assigned him enough Warning Points to trigger a time-based ban, and then deleted those Warning Points. The end result is that the user remains banned, but there is no evidence left behind -- no log entries, no historical warning point entries on the User's profile page, nothing -- to explain the ban.

 

[CTXMedia]

Have you checked the admin and moderator logs in the ACP (Tools section IIRC)?

 

[Myke623]

In quickly looking at the available logs, ...

Yes, I did!

 

[Jake Bunce]

Warnings are logged in the user's profile. Visit their profile on the front end. If they have warnings then there will be a warnings tab. Warnings can result in bans if you have such an action setup in the Admin CP. And of course bans are viewable in the Admin CP.

 

[Jake Bunce]

One possibility is that a Moderator momentarily assigned him enough Warning Points to trigger a time-based ban, and then deleted those Warning Points. The end result is that the user remains banned, but there is no evidence left behind -- no log entries, no historical warning point entries on the User's profile page, nothing -- to explain the ban.

I reviewed the code and you are right. It looks to me like temporary bans via warnings are always allowed to finish even if you delete the warnings that triggered the ban. But perma-bans will be removed upon deleting the warning points. There are also special checks for overlapping bans where appropriate. Ignoring that special scenario... perma-bans get lifted with the deletion of warning points, temp bans do not.

Bans given via warnings should show up in the ban log with the reason, "Rules violations". That is from the warning_ban_reason phrase.

 

[Myke623]

Bans given via warnings should show up in the ban log with the reason, "Rules violations". That is from the warning_ban_reason phrase.

There's no actual ban "log" though, is there? Because this is what I was looking for.

I think you're referring to the Banned Users List (ACP > Users > Banned Users) which will list users that are currently banned.

In my scenario, I was trying to perform a post-mortem on a user that was no longer banned, and therefore would not appear in the above "list". But if a "log" (historical record) existed of warnings points and/or bans, then I could have seen that they were momentarily assigned enough warning points to trigger the temp-ban before those warning points were deleted.

After some discussion with my moderators, it turns out that this is what actually happened. They accidentally assigned too many points, deleted the points, and reassigned the correct (reduced) amount. But unbeknownst to the mod, the user ended up being temporarily banned.

 

[Jake Bunce]

There's no actual ban "log" though, is there?

Nope.

After some discussion with my moderators, it turns out that this is what actually happened. They accidentally assigned too many points, deleted the points, and reassigned the correct (reduced) amount. But unbeknownst to the mod, the user ended up being temporarily banned.

Yeah that use case isn't handled very well. The mods would have to ask the admin to unban the user. You might consider perma-bans instead which are deleted along with the warning points. Or reserve bans for the admin.

 

[Myke623]

I think this was a rare occurrence, and since I'm pretty pleased overall with how user discipline is managed then I don't think I'll necessarily make any changes.

Having warning points logged in the Moderator's Log would be ideal (and makes sense?), so it's unfortunate that it's not there.