Discipline / Infraction System

I do agree discipline is the wrong word, and infact I changed my entire infraction system so it read as "editorial notice" to lessen the reply arguments upon staff. It is needed to manage large numbers of users and at the same time removes ambiguity from staff to members.
 
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.

If those reports / infractions sat in a special table, they could be shown to the staff in a more efficient manner (e.g. notification bars / pop ups vs. a sub forum you have to occasionally check), as well as a central location to track it all. Since mods can't hard delete posts on one forum, but admins can, it makes it a bit of a pain in the ass to combine the reported threads with the infractions, delete the duplicate posts, and then go to their profile to find / perm delete the posts. Could be a feature or a plugin to XF.
I agree with you here. I must say though that Kier/Mike did officially state that there was a centralised location for moderators to track things like these.
 
Actually with VB I didn't have the reputation system turned on. Even if it had been though, I think my point is that just naming the system 'infraction' or 'warning' gives the messages a certain impact. A lot of the time you aren't really warning so much as passing on a hopefully friendly reminder.

Obviously there's the pm system, but (with VB at least) the warning system leaves records that any admin can see and also create a topic in an admin forum for any discussion.
 
Good for you RG101.

I absolutely detest the infraction system so it sounds like you turned an absolute negative into a positive.
 
Oh, I loved the infraction system - having some kind of trackable admin to member communication is great, and the way it integrates into the pm system and creates a topic in the admin forum is ideal. I guess one failing is that subsequent replies aren't available to other admins, but generally we'd pop in to the admin forum and update that particular topic to let other admins know what the response had been. We could then do an admin forum search on the member's user name and merge all the various post reports and infractions into one thread so you could quickly scan that member's 'record' - and crucially admin discussion of it - if you like.

But most of the time a PM headed 'Warning' or 'Infraction' is too harsh and gets people on the defensive right away. You're better off with something like 'Admin Message' and then have options:

Admin Message: Quick Etiquette Request
Admin Message: Rules Reminder

and so it's not just for the nasty things . . .

Admin Message: Excellent Post, thanks!
Admin Message: Great Community Building!

though of course in some cases . . .


Admin Message: Final Warning
Admin Message: You're Banned. HA!

And if you wanted you could maybe tie that in to the reputation and trophy systems, but that's probably getting ahead of ourselves for now.
 
I like how you made it more positive Rg101 but it makes me wonder, did you just have the "positive" ones set to 0 points? Or does vBulletin support minus points and I just didn't figure this out :P
 
We're kind of getting into my ideal system here rather than what we actually had, and I should point out that while I had 'Thanks!' as one of the options for my Admin note system, we used the 'Oi, stop that!' one much more.

We didn't use points at all I think, certainly not to implement any kind of 'three strikes and you're out' system, so positive points wasn't an issue. We just used best judgement - two different minor offences from a new member, no real problem. Two identical minor offences after been asked not to do that already and we'd probably assume he was ignoring us and needed a quick ban to remind him we were serious the first time.
 
I think that for some forums, an official warning system is a must. Many users will not respect the authority of a staff PM. I've seen it happen, and even I'm sometimes like this depending on how professional the PM is. I know that if I was a user who broke a rule, I'd like to see it in official writing in a special area of the site.

While I'm certainly not asking for xenForo to have as harsh as a system as vB, it would be nice to have an official tool to send notices to users. My idea for XF is this:
Rules are defined in a database table using the ACP, instead of being just written down on a page or in a topic. Each rule will have a certain amount of "points" or "demerits" associated with it, as well as an expiration. This also allows staff to quickly change rules without worrying about changing all the places they appear.

When a rule is violated and a warning issued, the warning is logged and an alert is sent to the user. The alert will contain the rule and its description, as well as a staff comment if the moderator chose to add one. The last thing in the PM will be a link to the warning in the "warning area" I mentioned earlier.

When viewing the warning area, users will see a list of their warnings that can be clicked on for more information. At the top will be the number of demerits on your account. Clicking on a warning will show all of the info about the warning. (Date/time, rule and description, demerits, expiration, removed content, link to content.) The moderator's identity is hidden from the user to protect them from flaming, but is visible to other staff members.

When a warning has expired, it will be hidden from the user completely. It will be visible only to staff members when looking through a member's entire history. The demerits associated with the warning will also be removed, and no trace of the warning will be left for the user.

In this way, users are able to learn from their mistakes without feeling that what they've done is unforgivable. Expired warnings are hidden so they won't haunt users for the rest of their time on the forums. The purpose of demerits is so that users know exactly what the state of their account is, and can change their behavior before a suspension or ban is issued.

That's just my idea, and obviously the whole thing should be customizable and optional.
 
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An infraction system is essential for big boards. The people that are against it clearly haven't been a moderator or administrator on a big board, having to deal with many users who keep breaking the rules and you're just not able to remember all and know when they've gone too far and need to be banned. A warning system is needed to keep track of every user's behavior and treat them all the same.

Now, I'm not saying we need a copy of the vB system (although I have no problems with it, it works the way I want) but something is definitely needed.
 
An infraction system is essential for big boards. The people that are against it clearly haven't been a moderator or administrator on a big board, having to deal with many users who keep breaking the rules and you're just not able to remember all and know when they've gone too far and need to be banned. A warning system is needed to keep track of every user's behavior and treat them all the same.

Now, I'm not saying we need a copy of the vB system (although I have no problems with it, it works the way I want) but something is definitely needed.
My biggest gripe with the vB system was that if you wanted to ban from ACP/ModCP, there was no way to track that.
 
Has anything further been done on this as I cannot consider migrating to XF until it has one. We have a large board and would quite simply be lost without the Infraction system in VB. Its in no way ideal, but it gets the job done.

Put simply, no Infractions style system - no sale.
 
Has anything further been done on this as I cannot consider migrating to XF until it has one. We have a large board and would quite simply be lost without the Infraction system in VB. Its in no way ideal, but it gets the job done.

Put simply, no Infractions style system - no sale.
I'd be surprised if something like this would make the first RTM/gold release of XF. And we are not even sure if they are considering it at all.

Also I think if they are considering it, it probably will be something that is different from the vB system.
 
I don't doubt it would be different, my point is that for any big boards to consider moving over, they need this as a v1 release feature.
 
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