Warnings enhancement

[LaCollision]

Hi Invision,

I am an active IP Board customer since a few years, and i'm dealing with a large online community. IP Board is without any doubt the greatest board on the market, with so many options, and it is so smart.

However, with a large community, I have to deal with many inappropriate posts and insulting members.
Obviously, I use the Warning system a lot, and I have established a kind of workflow :

- 1 warning ==> simple MP
- 2 warnings ==> another simple MP
- 3 warnings ==> member writing rights are disabled for 48 hours
- 4 warnings ==> the member is suspended for 1 week
- 5 warnings ==> the member is banned

The warnings can be given for many reasons : insults, porn images, posting ads, etc.
So I have written some standard messages for each situation.

Now, when warning a member, my workflow is :
1. I have to choose the appropriate "punishment" depending on the warning level of the member (nothing or suspension, or ban)
2. I have to choose the appropriate message to be sent to the member.

The problem is that my moderators team is, as in many boards, volunteers.
And this warning workflow takes time and requests a certain amount of concentration... and as a consequence, my moderators often forget to sent the appropriate message or to give the appropriate "punishment".

I think my problem must be pretty much the same for every online board.
So I am wondering if it could not be possible in Invision to :

- create in the ACP some pre-defined "punishment" actions that are attached to the warning status of members.
- create in the ACP some pre-defined messages.

Then, when a moderator warns a member, the "punishment" would be automatically applied, and the moderator could also choose a predefined message, according to the problem (insult, spam, etc.).


Ok.

That was my first request :)

I have a second one, which is way simpler !

For the warning system, in the ACP, we can choose the following option:
"Allow all other non-protected groups to see their own warn level and reasons? If set to "yes", members will be able to see their own warn level and reasons for their warns." YES / NO

I think another option is much smarter : ONLY warned members could see their warning level.

Why that ? Because 98% of my members are not warned, and will never be.
But I want warned members to be aware of their warnings.

And here is the problem :

- if I set this setting to "YES", everybody will see their warning level. And 98% of my kind and gentle members will think : "Hey this is very not nice to see that warning system, I feel being on an hostile board, with a permanent threat over my head". That is a very negative feeling I don't want my members to have.

- if I set this setting to "NO", warned members don't know their level of warning. And when some of them reach the last level of warning (= ban) they feel very surprised and send me emails = "Hey, I've never done anything wrong !!".

So, as a conclusion, I think that only warned members should see their warning level, and not non-warned members.


Okay, thank you very much for reading, I hope my pretty bad english did not hurt your eyes too much.

:)

[AndyF]

I have thought about a kind of multimod action for a warn (to save manually doing the same) although implementing it tidily on the front end (the warning screen) could be a bit tricky to make it look nice. I do like the general idea though on the whole. :)