XF 1.3 Various Moderation Improvements

XenForo 1.3 also contains a number of changes and improvements to help moderators. Let's look at some of them...

Reporting a User

While this isn't related to an action a moderator would take themselves, users can now be reported directly from their profile. This can be used for users that haven't posted any content, but may have an inappropriate avatar, signature, or other value.

Thread Moderator Action History

Moderators can now view all moderator-level actions taken in a thread from a new option in the Thread Tools menu:

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This will display an overlay like this:

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Moving Posts to an Existing Thread

When moving posts via inline moderation, they can now be moved to an existing thread by simply providing the URL to that thread:

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This URL is processed with the same system that processes incoming requests, so it correctly handles URL modifications using route filters.

Copying Posts

Individual posts can now be duplicated via inline moderation:

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As you can see, the options are similar to moving posts, so you can create a new thread or copy them to an existing one.

Limited User Editing

You can now give moderators access to edit a limited amount of user information. This includes:
  • Custom titles
  • Location
  • Occupation
  • Home page
  • About
  • Signature
  • Avatar
  • And selected custom fields
The goal here is simply to allow moderators to remove inappropriate content. Moderators can edit the text of the fields as necessary, although they can only remove a specified avatar.

Each custom field now has an option to control whether moderators can edit the field value.

Shared IP Checking

To detect if a user had registered more than one account, we sometimes found that moderators were simply running the spam cleaner with only the "check IPs" option selected. This was not ideal and often not available as an option, so we've now added an option to check for shared IPs via a user's profile page:

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This brings up an overlay that's very similar to the version shown in the spam cleaner:

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Additional Warning Action Options

The approach for defining a warning action has been modified:

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Most significantly, all warning actions can now be specified to only run for a specific time period. Previously, only bans could be run for a length of time; groups or discouragement were applied while above the points threshold.

While this might not seem like a big change, the most significant power lies in adding a user to a specific group. Using the XenForo permission system, you can remove specific permissions from users that have crossed your warning thresholds. This is the use case that Never was designed for.

You can now create a warning action hierarchy such as:
  • Manually approve posts for 1 day
  • Manually approve posts for 3 days
  • Read only for 3 days
  • Read only for 1 week
  • Ban for 1 week
  • Ban permanently
Previously, you would have had to do quite a lot of this manually.

From a development perspective, the system for making temporary user changes has been designed to be very generic and usable in other ways. I'm sure there will be some very cool uses of this system once 1.3 is out.


Until next time...
 
Great to see thread edit history log implemented. Will there be an import function for this as well so that we can import the thread edit history log from vbulletin, etc?
It would be great if such data would not be lost on migration.
 
That log is simply exposing the moderator log, so it's very unlikely that there would be an importer for that. I've not looked at conversion of that data though.
 
@Mike I like the shared IPs function. Coud it be xtended so that it will list accounts that share IPs rather than having to go into each account to check manually?

Also is there going to be any multiple accounts detection built in? Because I would find that more useful than the shared IPs detection
 
Yes finally my mods can edit typical user information. Long waited feature. I was hoping there some kind of inline moderation after the mod performed a search. Guess we'll have to wait for that someday.
 
This is starting to look more exciting than I thought. I like the way you build excitement around the next release! (y)

PS: Superlike for allowing to move posts to existing thread!
 
Most significantly, all warning actions can now be specified to only run for a specific time period. Previously, only bans could be run for a length of time; groups or discouragement were applied while above the points threshold.

While this might not seem like a big change, the most significant power lies in adding a user to a specific group. Using the XenForo permission system, you can remove specific permissions from users that have crossed your warning thresholds. This is the use case that Never was designed for.

We have been transitioning to using the warnings system to deal with problem members, something we've never attempted in 10+ years. Having more flexibility in how warnings are applied is perfect for what we need! And the other moderator tools here are very welcome indeed. (y)
 
This just made my day, the moving posts to an existing thread was a really really required feature. Great job guys! Can't wait for 1.3 :D
 
Ooooh nice shiny new things!
Particularly liking the Copy / Move posts feature, and the time-limit on warning actions.
It now means you can exclude people from a forum for a particular amount of time....easier, and without forgetting to let them back in ;)

While you're giving limited user edit actions to the moderators for specific fields. Would it be pertinent to give them the facility to search those fields too?
 
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