XF 1.2 Basic moderation abilities unavailable to moderators?

Stuart Wright

Well-known member
Just been asked this by the moderators ahead of migrating:

"How do I {look up a member's email}?"
"How do I {look up a members D.O.B}?"
"How do I {look up a member's registration IP}?"
"How do I {look up all of a member's posting IPs}?"
"How do I {cross check IPs across members}?"
"How do I {look up a member's reason for being banned}?"
and I just realised there is no modcp like in vbulletin where they can do this stuff.
It's essential functionality.
How do we do it?
 
Other than the Spam Cleaner which enables some of that, the rest is only available to administrators.
This is correct.

However, that's where there needs to be a fundamental attitude shift when moving from vBulletin to XenForo.

In vBulletin land, if you're an Admin that means you're someone incredibly important and you have all the power. You have all the ability of a Moderator and then some.

In XenForo world, if you're an Admin you could, of course, be someone incredibly important and have all the power. But in actual fact, an Administrator could equally have no Moderation abilities. You could effectively have an Administrator that isn't even allowed to post on the forums.

Everything is granular.

So, the "essential functionality" is already there. You make everyone who needs to perform those tasks into an Administrator.

Here's one of my moderators at ValveTime.net:

upload_2013-9-2_22-31-6.webp

Those two checkboxes will give that Moderator access to all of that functionality you mentioned. But nothing more.

But they're still just a Moderator on the forums. They can still only moderate the forums they moderate. Do the things on the forum that a Moderator is allowed to do.
 
If a moderator is given the ability to manage users and moderators, can they not delete users and make new moderators? These are abilities I definitely do not want them to have.
This hurdle might be a problem. Can't be making every moderator an administrator.
Going to need some tools for standard moderators.
 
Ok, so I'm being asked by my moderators how to do various things and I don't have a clue.
How, for example, can the supermods read private conversations? (We put in our T&Cs that they may do this with sufficient reason). Is it possible?
How can moderators do a search for users by IP address of content/registration?
Why do moderators see post reports for threads are not in the forums they moderate?

and I'm going to have to ask for an addon which allows moderators to see the user admin page and all the tabs (User Essentials, Personal Details, Profile Info, Additional Contact, Preferences, Privacy and IP Addresses) but not edit. Seems the quickest way to get this job done.
 
There is no way to read a private conversation. The report center is visible to all moderators, and is mostly content location "unaware". I use the spam cleaner to check IPs, but it's not ideal.
 
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Ok, so I'm being asked by my moderators how to do various things and I don't have a clue.
How, for example, can the supermods read private conversations? (We put in our T&Cs that they may do this with sufficient reason). Is it possible?
There is an add-on for that
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/tlk-readpc.108/


How can moderators do a search for users by IP address of content/registration?
Give whatever user group you have as mods and give them permission to do so. They should be able to see the button / link on each post. Its what I did.

Why do moderators see post reports for threads are not in the forums they moderate?
XenForo doesn't do it per forum, but globally.
 
Why do moderators see post reports for threads are not in the forums they moderate?
Unless there's a bug in XF, this shouldn't be the case.

If someone is a moderator anywhere in XF, they see reports from any forum where they can handle the issue -- in this context, it means that they have permissions to edit or delete and post in that forum.
 
Unless there's a bug in XF, this shouldn't be the case.

If someone is a moderator anywhere in XF, they see reports from any forum where they can handle the issue -- in this context, it means that they have permissions to edit or delete and post in that forum.

I think you maybe misunderstanding what he was saying Mike.

In vBulletin I could be a user and see all forums. But only have mod duties in X forum, even though I could use and visit all forum as a user.

In XenForo if I'm staff.... I get reports for all forums I have access to.... ie... There is no assigned forum staff per forum
 
@Mike, thanks. This is fairly difficult to reliably report because I'm far from 100% sure that I have set up the permissions properly. But I think I have.
Complicated by the fact that after our import onto the sandbox, moderators are put into the moderators usergroup but not made proper moderators.
 
Ah.... Either that's new (in the last 365 days / 1 year) or I never noticed it.

I'm not someone who uses the "per forum" staff structure.....
That's the way I've been setting moderators up.
We have to set up all 50 of our moderators into multiple forums after the import. That will take some considerable time. One thing I'm going to ask for is the ability to select multiple nodes from the node list when assigning moderators.
 
Unless there's a bug in XF, this shouldn't be the case.

If someone is a moderator anywhere in XF, they see reports from any forum where they can handle the issue -- in this context, it means that they have permissions to edit or delete and post in that forum.
Is not what I'm seeing in our Sandbox installation. Using my test account as a Moderator in just ONE forum, I nevertheless am seeing an alert flag and then details of reports in other forums - things I can't deal with. That's going to cause blindness - alert flags won't be paid any attention if they are constantly incorrectly showing.

(Posted with the same caveat "This is fairly difficult to reliably report because I'm far from 100% sure that I have set up the permissions properly.")
 
I've done some more checking around and this comment:
"in this context, it means that they have permissions to edit or delete and post in that forum"
throws light in that my Moderator (of one forum) in fact has full edit privilege of others' posts across the whole board.
I just can't work out why!!
 
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