Suggestion: Reports posted to nominated forum (rather than report centre)

[Clickfinity]

Can I suggest a modification to the report centre - can we have an option to post reports into a forum instead of the report centre (or as well as).

I imagine an ACP dropdown of all the forums you have, with nothing selected initially - and by specifying a forum all future reports are posted (or copied) there.

My moderators are really struggling with the report centre and having the reports in a forum would keep the "active / current" ones we are discussing at the top, allow us to edit our posts (you can't edit report comments!!), and will more searchable too.

I'm currently considering copying all the reports into our moderators forum so I can get my moderators involved again.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[rgf100]

Yes yes yes yes, a thousand times yes. The report center as it stands is basically a half-functional forum anyway, and my interactions with admin members have died since I switched to IPB.

[Biker.GA]

This is something I've asked for in the past as well. The report center is a nice idea, but the implementation of the idea stinks. In addition to being too restrictive regarding access, the failure of new reports and comments to be included in search requests makes it virtually useless in our setup.

[Fishfish0001]

Agree. Nice to talk about reports in a forum. How about the ability to have them auto locked when the report is marked as finished in the report center and stuff. And maybe have the flags too for the post icons in that forums or whatever, so we can see the higher level ones and such.

[TCWT]

I absolutely agree with this.

[sound]

there is a rss feed of the reports - yep ?
havent really looked at it to deep
but cant that be used to import all reports in to a forum ?

[Biker.GA]

Duplicating reports isn't the answer. FIXING the blasted thing is.

[A Walk in Faith]

I agree with the OP suggestion. Having the report center is nice, but it sure was easier over at the 'other place' where when infractions and banning were given a thread was started so all staff could discuss it, be made aware of it and move on.

If IPS isn't willing to change it completely maybe a compromise would to be offer both and have it selectable in the ACP. This way the Admin would be able to choose how they want it handled.

Great suggestion to help make a great piece of software work better!!

Jamie

[AndyF]

Before 3.x , reports used to just go to either email or PM, which although OK left a bit of confusion as to who was dealing with what.

There was a reasonably popular modification for the 2.x series 'Reports as topics' which did just that, it created a topic in a designated forum containing the reported content etc, although it would only do reported topics, nothing else though as far as I remember.

I do (just my opinion) prefer the report centre though :) , it is an easy to use built in centralised area and relatively easy for modification authors to plug into (so they can add report options for their applications to it too).

Perhaps a feature suggestion for the RC would be to allow comments to be edited ?


@Cyclechat specifically, I did whip up a quick 'Report Centre Guide' to help my moderators use it, although it was written for 3.0.x most of it still applies. I shall post it here (I did post it once before in the Customer Lounge) if it helps (the images are externally linked for convenience) of course you are welcome to copy / paste / amend and use in a staff topic on your site if you want to.

A quick guide on using the Report Centre.

Link

First of all, the link is on the header above the logo. It will change to red if anything is in need of attention:

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Notification Options

The first thing I'd suggest is decide what type of notification (if any) you wish to receive for reported content. To do this, click the link and then click the Report Options button:

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You can see here you can choose to receive email and / or PM notification of new reports (or no notification at all) , choose what you feel appropriate and save. This option is just for you, the same way as you can choose to receive (or not) notification of new PM's or profile comments etc.

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Using the Report Centre

OK, lets take a look at an example:

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Here we have a total of two reports, notice the flag icon on the left side. The green one (the lower one) indicates this report has been completed. The other one has a white flag on it, this is the report that requires attention. You can see which section the report came from and who reported it too. Click on the title to view that report.

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Here we can see the reported post, the reported message and the reporter. Note there is a comment section here where you can leave comments for other staff as appropriate. This does not effect the topic, all comments in the Report Centre stay in the Report Center. You can also see near the top the text "This report is regarding..." , this is a link to the reported item if you wished to view it (perhaps edit a post etc)

Taking Action

Once you have taken appropriate action as needed, you just need to mark the report as complete. This will turn it off in the header area (it will only show red if anything is needing attention). To do that, at the top click on the "Current Status" button:

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You can see there are two options here, marking as complete or marking under review. Typically the only time you will use mark as under review is when you are not sure and want others opinions. Doing this will still leave it marked as needing attention, but it is better than doing nothing as it shows a staff member has looked at it but is unsure of what action to take (or perhaps they need an administrator to act on the report)

Marking it as complete will as the name suggests, mark it as complete.

Useful links

Reported content is also marked on the forum where appropriate, you will see something like this if you are viewing a reported post:

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Other content

It's also possible for members to report other members profiles, their Blog / Gallery entries etc. The procedure is the same, a link will appear in the header area indicating a new report and the Report Centre will indicate the item needing attention. You just simply proceed the same as you would do with a post, editing or removing as needed and mark the report as appropriate.

Bear in mind, I did write it for 3.0.x so notification settings are not shown but it should (hopefully) help your staff a little bit.

[Jυra]

I greatly prefer the center. I haven't had enough content reported, but I assume a second report is formed under the original when two of the same things are reported. I don't see how there would be duplicate reports if it's like that?

I really don't see how this could decrease moderation activity and communication. Also, having a report center would allow them to add other features like maybe suspension/ban controls in the same area in the future.

[Clickfinity]

I've just been informed by my mods that they no longer receive an email when something is reported.

Is this something I can configure in IPB 3.12?

This is probably also adding to moderator disconnection.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Clickfinity]

Andy, your guide was one of my very first posts into the moderators forum after we converted ... :thumbsup:

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[rgf100]

I really don't see how this could decrease moderation activity and communication. . . .

You can assume moderators and admins spend a ton of time on the forums they work on, I think. Putting post reports, infraction notifications, etc, into a private admin forum mean that they're a part of their normal forum usage. If they're going into an RSS feed, email or even PM, they're much more easily overlooked.

[Clickfinity]

I've just been informed by my mods that they no longer receive an email when something is reported.

Is this something I can configure in IPB 3.12?

Do I take it this is something IPB doesn't do?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[AndyF]

Andy, your guide was one of my very first posts into the moderators forum after we converted ... :thumbsup:

Cheers,

Shaun :D

Oh I did not know. :D , you're welcome.

Do I take it this is something IPB doesn't do?

Cheers,

Shaun :D

They need to just adjust their notification settings to receive email of reported content if they wish to:




Then you need to globally enable it too ;) , head over to Tools / Settings > 'Members' > Warning / Moderation. Scroll down to the end:



I would assume its the settings in this case if none of your staff receive any notifications, otherwise it will be up to them to adjust to their preferences (assuming you have not globally disabled it either there or in the Notification Defaults page) :)

[Clickfinity]

Ah, thanks Andy I'll look into that ... :D

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[bfarber]

Personally, I find a stand alone report center more useful - it is not tied down by the workings of a forum.

That's not to say we couldn't improve the report center itself, however. Keep in mind that it was introduced in 3.0 (that was what, less than a year ago?) and can certainly evolve like any other feature.

Some useful suggestions in this topic could be applied to the report center itself. Namely

• Ability to sort by last reply (most recent activity first)
• Ability to edit comments (though I'm really not sure why you would want your moderators editing their comments on reported content...)
• Ability to search
  

Those are the only things brought up in this topic really, and wouldn't take that long to implement on their own.

In addition to being too restrictive regarding access...[cut]

What exactly are you having trouble configuring with regards to access? You can control on a per-plugin basis which permission masks can report content, and which permission masks can handle reported content. Plugins then can override this (for instance, with forums, moderators only get access to content reported from forums they can moderate) and I've not heard of any problems with access configuration until your mention there.

[Biker.GA]

Unless one goes in and modifies the core files, only staff members are able to access the Report Center. If you create a specialized group that is not a member of the moderator or admin usergroup, by default, they are not given access to the Report Center, even if you attempt to grant access via the ACP.

[Wolfie]

The current RC just needs to be tweaked some. Like being able to an easy to click link to a reported members profile or their profile card. To have the reported content in a post by itself (hilighted in the 'unapproved post' color) with the reported comments below would also be more helpful, so that if there are multiple reports, the content is only shown once with the 'replies' being the actual report comments.

Having the layout be portal style would be nice too. Something like this:

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| [*|current status]                                         (age of report) |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|       Member reported       || Reported content                            |

|        (basic stats)        ||                                             |

|                             ||                                             |

|                             ||                                             |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|


|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| [*|current status]                                         (age of report) |

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

|        User Comments        ||               Staff Interaction             |

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

| Username#1(*)   (date/time) || Staffmember#1                   (date/time) |

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

|       report comments       || (comments or status change listed here)     |

|       from username#1       ||---------------------------------------------|

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

|-----------------------------|| StaffMember#2                   (date/time) |

| Username#2 (*)  (date/time) ||---------------------------------------------|

|-----------------------------|| (comments or status change listed here)     |

|       report comments       ||---------------------------------------------|

|       from username#2       ||---------------------------------------------| 

|-----------------------------|| StaffMember#3                   (date/time) |

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

| Username#3 (*)  (date/time) || (comments or status change listed here)     |

|-----------------------------||---------------------------------------------|

|       report comments       ||

|       from username#3       ||   [*|current status]        [add comment]

|-----------------------------|| 

Simple but effective.
Clicking on the current status allows you to change it.

[MissNinja]

+1 for this suggestion. I greatly dislike the reports center as it is and it would be SO much more useful if reports were forwarded to a specified forum! I don't like the reports system being a separate thing at ALL. It's out of the way. It doesn't have an "unread" option, so it's hard for moderators to have a discussion without constantly checking back to see if someone else has responded. We've actually made forum topics to discuss reports a few times- it's WAY more easy to carry on a conversation through the forum than the report system, and we almost always decide to discuss reports before taking definite action.

Ideally I'd love to have the reports center as a subforum in my private moderator forum. It would be so much easier to actually have a discussion about the report in the forums than in the reports center which is, in my opinion, one of the most badly handled aspects of IPB. It's a great idea, I just don't find the implementation very practical or easy to use.

I understand IPS disagrees, but it seems quite a few people posting here would prefer it this way... is there any chance of it being changed this way for a future release? :/ At least to have it as an option to use it either as a separate reports center or to have reports forwarded to a separate forum.

[Clickfinity]

The report centre changes would be a good enhancement, but can we have the option to copy reports to a nominated moderators forum please?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Biker.GA]

IF the reports were included in search (What's New), as well as the ability to modify posts in the report center, I'd be a happy camper. The majority of my staff uses "What's New" on a regular basis. We don't look "per forum", but list all new posts and view at our leisure. Having the Report Center as a completely separate function of the site is a royal pain in the backside, and reported posts can languish for days before the entire staff weighs in on it.

[rgf100]

IF the reports were included in search (What's New), as well as the ability to modify posts in the report center, I'd be a happy camper. . . Having the Report Center as a completely separate function of the site is a royal pain in the backside, and reported posts can languish for days before the entire staff weighs in on it.

Agreed, but I suspect the current architecture of IPB would result in the report center being treated as a different content type - much like blogs or members, and so new reports would still be under a different tab from actual forum posts.

[bfarber]

I understand IPS disagrees, but it seems quite a few people posting here would prefer it this way... is there any chance of it being changed this way for a future release? :/ At least to have it as an option to use it either as a separate reports center or to have reports forwarded to a separate forum.

Let's be honest here....there are only 4-5 people stating they don't like the implementation, and best I can tell all of the users stating this have recently converted from vBulletin. I'm not saying that's the reason some users don't like it, but it is often the case that things done differently in IPB vs a software a user is accustomed to get picked apart first by newly converted users.

I would rather put some effort into the report center to make it more useful, than rip it out and use a forum. What we have now is what a good majority of our users requested prior to IPB 3 (and in fact, multiple modifications were available to accomplish). At this point in time, I think we can work to improve it, but I don't know that using a forum is the best solution. That just feels tacked on/hacky to me. For instance, we are considering doing some work to report center and warn center simultaneously, and integrating the two features a little more closely. Things like this would be much more difficult to accomplish in the forums directly.

Tracking whether you've read a report or not is entirely possible. That is really the only suggestion you posed in your last reply that I can see?

[Clickfinity]

Yes, I can understand you not wanting to get rid of the report centre, but could an option be added to COPY the report into a forum?

That way those of us who would prefer to use a forum, could.

It's only a matter of creating a new topic - the report content is already being created for the report itself so I wouldn't imagine it would add too much coding would it?

Cheers,
Shaun :D