Warnings (re)trigger acceptance of terms

[Mr Lucky]

When a user receives a warning, I think it would be really useful if there was an option to make that user re-accept the terms and conditions. Maybe some extra action if they don't accept such as banning, although come to think of it if they don't accept the T & C notice then they are effectively stopped from using the forum anyway.

 

[BassMan]

Interesting suggestion.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes, it occurred to me as I warned somebody this morning. Most warnings are because somebody broke the rules, so it makes total sense that they accept them. Not they will probably ever bother to actually read the terms.

 

[Alpha1]

This feature actually works pretty well. Most people will not read rules until they are warned. Because at that point they find that there are consequences to not reading the rules.

Best approach IME is to force them to:
- accept the rules again
- have a timer on it (no immediately dismissing it)
- make them acknowledge that what they did wrong is not allowed.

 

[Sabermaster]

I like that idea!!!

 

[Kirby]

Nice idea
But I fear it won't be easy to implement.

 

[Alpha1]

No, I dont think it would be hard to implement. I had it on vbulletin since 2005. I have it on xenforo 1. For XF1 I use @Xon 's warning acknowledgement which is highly recommended. It saves me so much work.
I also use ThemeHouse Rules which is quite a buggy addon but has a timer.
IIRC it didn't take much development time to force members to re-read the rules after a warning and integrate with warning acknowledgement.

XenForo latest version already has a function to force all members to re-read the rules. So that would functionality could probably be reused to force a member to read the rules again.

 

[Mr Lucky]

But I fear it won't be easy to implement.

As Alfa1 says, it could be very easy as we already have the capability to force re-acceptance for all users.

 

[Kirby]

Take a look at how it is currently implemented and you might see why it might not be that easy

 

[Mr Lucky]

Take a look at how it is currently implemented and you might see why it might not be that easy

Please explain

 

[Kirby]

It is currently implemented as two hidden options, one for privacy policy and one for t&c storing the timestamp of the last update/enforcement.

The user table has been extended to hold timestamps of the last acceptance date for both, these values are compared at runtime to the option values and if it is smaller the user has to re-accept.

Now if you wanted only certain users to re-accept you would either have to change the option values (doesn't work, as everybody would have to re-accept and would be semantically wrong as there has been no update) or you would have to set the values for those users to a value smaller then the option value (doesn't really work either as this somewhat causes data loss and is also semantically incorrect).

So in order to do this properly, IMHO substantial changes to the system would probably be required.

 

[Alpha1]

XenForo registers when someone accepted the rules:

This is important from a legal standpoint. It was implemented in XenForo because this is stipulated by EU Directives like GDPR and national laws.
When a warning is sent then the member is in breach of the terms and rules.

The rule breach indicates that the member no longer agrees to the rules and terms. Or that the member is not aware of the rules. The GDPR stipulates that terms and functionality must make the terms intelligible and easy to understand. When a rule is breached its logical to assume that the member doesn't understand or know the rules OR no longer agrees with the rules OR both. This would void the registered acceptance of the terms and rules.
It sounds backwards, but a member could even make the argument that the website is in breach of the GDPR after receiving a warning.

Both from a legal standpoint as from experience it makes a lot of sense to make the member accept the rules again.

Please consider to add a function to let members accept the terms and rules again, and register this in the user change log.
@Mike I'm bringing this to your attention as the above concerns a legal reasoning that may interest you.