[Suggestion] Operating hours for a forum

[Walter]

It would be cool if there was an admin option to specify operating hours for the forum.

Why? Simply to turn off registration during certain hours (option 1) or to switch the forum to read only mode (option 2). Reasons:

• One of my forums is for children and the moderators have to closely monitor the forum not only for spammers but also for adults in disguise, often registering at hours when children are at sleep.
• At my largest forum we had one month where trolls where hitting us hard, they where extremely persistent, they knew our mods where pretty good at banning them during normal hours (7 am to 11 pm) but we all need some sleep from time to time
• Corporate forums which simply don't like to clean up a forum from nightly spam

Don't forget, if you like this idea click on the "Like" button!

 

[Walter]

why don't you just use moderated-registration plus the first ten posts are moderated, or something like that?

On a large forum you get so many new members and posts per day that it is not feasable to moderate all this members and posts.

During the day the troll prevention works quite good, members report troll posts pretty fast and moderators clean it up. But e.g. during the 6 hours in the night they can do as they want. Only way would be to switch to moderatore posts on during this six hours...

 

[CyberAP]

On a large forum you get so many new members and posts per day that it is not feasable to moderate all this members and posts.

During the day the troll prevention works quite good, members report troll posts pretty fast and moderators clean it up. But e.g. during the 6 hours in the night they can do as they want. Only way would be to switch to moderatore posts on during this six hours...

You can simply delete all the posts they made (I have such a button in vB) and block them. Also you can create special group of users where all their posts should be approved by moderator. Once you've approved 5 or 10 posts you could change their group to full-featured members of your forum.

 

[David Thomas]

If I got a dollar for every "it's just an option; you don't have to enable it if you don't want to" statement, I'd be rich.

If every person got their little options, it'd take hours to configure the forum's hundreds of settings that have been added at the request of users in the vast minority. We don't want bloat. We want simplicity with the ability to add modifications and plugins at your leisure.

Exactly! And if the mod/plugin system is built in a way that developers can quickly and easily hook into it, then you can get these small features that people keep suggesting, without turning the core software into a massive vB/HP/Dell bloat-boat.

 

[Dean]

Repeatedly stating that this feature will only appeal to a handful of people is no argument, it is only an assumption.

What % of forum owners do you think would use this?

 

[feldon30]

I doubt that most forums have international users. How many people only know their first language good enough to communicate fluently?

What do you call a person that speaks 2 languages? Bilingual.
What do you call a person that speaks 1 language? American.

You derailed your own thread with this tangent.

 

[anotheralias]

Repeatedly stating that this feature will only appeal to a handful of people is no argument, it is only an assumption.

Well technically - it's also an assumption to say that it will appeal to a large number of people.

 

[Walter]

What do you call a person that speaks 2 languages? Bilingual.
What do you call a person that speaks 1 language? American.
 
You derailed your own thread with this tangent.

 
Why derailed? I am from Europe and English is not my native language.
 

 

[Walter]

You can simply delete all the posts they made

Now you tell me news! If I had known this before...... (sarcasmus)
This can become hard work. We sometimes have troll floods where they register dozens of accounts in one night posting hundreds of posts (no exaggeration). This feature is a way to prevent such attacks.

 

[CyberAP]

Now you tell me news! If I had known this before...... (sarcasmus)
This can become hard work. We sometimes have troll floods where they register dozens of accounts in one night posting hundreds of posts (no exaggeration). This feature is a way to prevent such attacks.

As I said before
 

you can create special group of users where all their posts should be approved by moderator. Once you've approved 5 or 10 posts you could change their group to full-featured members of your forum.

 

[Walter]

As I said before: this doesn't work. At a large forum you  have 50 to 500+ users per day registering. Do you really want to moderate all their posts? A nightmare.

 

[Dean]

Toggle to put non-admins in the unregistered usergroup perhaps?

Walter? Would this work?

A toggle to have everyone but admins get the same permission as unregistered users/guests? Then people could still join, and it would be read only?

 

[jonsidneyb]

30% of my users are from Europe, the UK, Austrailia, and Asia. The balance are in the US.

I have a moderator in Finland, in Scotland, and one is an Aussie. I really need one in Eastern Europe like Poland or somewhere in that time zone.

My place is a bit down right now but it is very international

http://edcforums.com/forum.php