Block or blacklist tags to prevent abuse and hate

[Alpha1]

Sometimes members abuse the tagging functionality to add hateful or abusive tags to content. Or to a specific user's content within the context of harassment.

It would be useful if we could blacklist abusive tags and also if we could see who added the tag and when.
Reporting a tag should be possible.

 

[Dragonfruit]

Is there not a way to find out who posted what tag? I was just checking and couldn’t find it. I recall people doing it in the past, but just like posts, we punished them for it. But we had a way to check who posted them on vbulletin.

 

[Alpha1]

On vbulletin you could see who posted it and when.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Is there not a way to find out who posted what tag?

I have always kept the permission only as tag own thread, no permissions to tag anyone else’s thread. That way you know who did the tag (unless it’s the same one on lots of threads in which case I think less relevant to this suggestion).

But I do also agree with the suggestion to block or blacklist certain tags and upvoted it for that reason.

 

[Dragonfruit]

I have always kept the permission only as tag own thread, no permissions to tag anyone else’s thread. That way you know who did the tag (unless it’s the same one on lots of threads in which case I think less relevant to this suggestion).

But I do also agree with the suggestion to block or blacklist certain tags and upvoted it for that reason.

I feel a log of some sort would be more effective. It only happened a small handful of times where something inappropriate was put in a tag on vbulletin, once we punished the users and made it clear we can actually see who authors the tags, it rarely happened again.

A block/black list is similar to a word censor, it's only effective for known content. People will always try to by pass it with acronyms and creative spellings.

I'm more satisfied with a way to check who did it, then punish them with a warning or disable their access to thread tagging.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Upvoted, of course!

I have always kept the permission only as tag own thread, no permissions to tag anyone else’s thread.

Same here. For reasons I'll mention below...

It only happened a small handful of times where something inappropriate was put in a tag on vbulletin, once we punished the users and made it clear we can actually see who authors the tags, it rarely happened again.

Maybe the ability to see who tagged messages didn't appear until vB 3.8 or later, as we'd enabled tags on 3.7 and had so much abuse of the tagging that we disabled it a month or two later. Many were trying to be "funny" where others wanted to get their digs in because they didn't like the topic being discussed. (A tag like "Not another _____ thread" was not uncommon.)

At least restricting the permission to the thread starter helps for us, as does the ability to create "synonyms" of tags (can't remember if that's through an addon or if it's in the core XF).

One thing I wish we had available to us, would be to provide a fixed set of tags. Members could tag threads with existing tags that the staff has curated, but new tags would not be allowed.

 

[Dragonfruit]

Maybe the ability to see who tagged messages didn't appear until vB 3.8 or later, as we'd enabled tags on 3.7 and had so much abuse of the tagging that we disabled it a month or two later. Many were trying to be "funny" where others wanted to get their digs in because they didn't like the topic being discussed. (A tag like "Not another _____ thread" was not uncommon.)

At least restricting the permission to the thread starter helps for us, as does the ability to create "synonyms" of tags (can't remember if that's through an addon or if it's in the core XF).

One thing I wish we had available to us, would be to provide a fixed set of tags. Members could tag threads with existing tags that the staff has curated, but new tags would not be allowed.

It's so far long ago, I wouldn't remember. It's possible we used a plugin/mod for it too. Restricting that wouldn't work for us, part of the fun is thread tagging especially in community threads and I wouldn't want to take that away from them.

I'm just surprised a logging function doesn't exist as an addon either, as I've been looking.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Restricting that wouldn't work for us, part of the fun is thread tagging especially in community threads and I wouldn't want to take that away from them.

I really wanted to use it also (especially to improve search results), but at the time we had no restrictions or logs in place for it, so we were left with no choice but to disable. I never upgraded from 3.7 to 3.8 since we had to heavily modify the forum for performance issues. And I believe 4.0 and 4.1 may have been out when we finally moved to XF back in 2012.

We just enabled it a few weeks ago (after maybe 15+ years of having it disabled!) to see what would happen, or to see if anyone even notices. I've had it on another forum since I converted to XF in late 2011 and it's rare that anyone even uses it. @Stuart Wright posted a suggestion to move the tag field up to a more prominent position when posting a new thread and honestly, that would probably help prevent it from being overlooked.

I'm just surprised a logging function doesn't exist as an addon either, as I've been looking.

I mean, we can say we are logging tags when we're really not. If members think they're being "watched," even if they're really not, there is some anticipation that any bad tag they would enter could be tied to them. Then again, since we have thread tagging available only to thread starters in XF, by default that would hold them accountable for any tags that are inappropriate.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Once we’re at 2.3 (nearly there, 80% of the addons we use are 2.3 ready), I have some big plans for Tag Essentials.
I will be adding an option to have tags under the title.
I will be adding a Quick Tag box which lists some (forum) specific tags which users can choose from. And I will be adding an option to restrict the use of tags (in a forum) to this list.
I will be adding a batch update threads option to AI generate tags.
I may allow admin to edit the AI prompt (although they could royally screw it up if it’s changed badly).
I will be adding a tag creation log and I may update Trophy Essentials to reward people when tags they have created are used by other people (this would require some further thought as I only just thought of it).
I may add a report tag option to the tag page.

 

[Dragonfruit]

Once we’re at 2.3 (nearly there, 80% of the addons we use are 2.3 ready), I have some big plans for Tag Essentials.
I will be adding an option to have tags under the title.
I will be adding a Quick Tag box which lists some (forum) specific tags which users can choose from. And I will be adding an option to restrict the use of tags (in a forum) to this list.
I will be adding a batch update threads option to AI generate tags.
I may allow admin to edit the AI prompt (although they could royally screw it up if it’s changed badly).
I will be adding a tag creation log and I may update Trophy Essentials to reward people when tags they have created are used by other people (this would require some further thought as I only just thought of it).
I may add a report tag option to the tag page.

+logging?