IPS 4 and the warning system

[wimg]

In V 3.1.4 and before, there was the possibility to increase and decrease warnings straight from the warnings panel.

In 3.4.x, this is no longer obvious, and we are really missing it. yes, it is good one can enter a negative value to diminish the warning points, but it is rather counter-intuitive to have to "Add a warning" to do so.

Could you please separate the two functions again in V 4.0, or at least have a separate link/button for dimishing warnings? It really is a separate action anyway.

Thank you very much in advance.

Warm regards, Wim

[Mark]

4.0 has a "Revoke" button to take a previous warning away which will decrease the warning points.

[Adriano Faria]

4.0 has a "Revoke" button to take a previous warning away which will decrease the warning points.

Only decrease points? What about:

- Remove restrictions added by the moderator (Moderate content, Remove ability to create content, Suspend)
- Unban the member
- Move the user to his/her original group, if the moderator changed it.

[GreenLinks]

Only decrease points? What about:

- Remove restrictions added by the moderator (Moderate content, Remove ability to create content, Suspend)
- Unban the member
- Move the user to his/her original group, if the moderator changed it.

There are other limitations within IPB warning system. Basically when we moved from vBulletin we were shocked with the limitations and had to develop tons of customisations just to get IPB warning system up to an acceptable/usable level. Honestly our staff still don't like it.

[Matt]

Can you give us some more information, Greenlinks on what you changed to make it more usable for your community?

[Kyle F]

Any chance you could make the warning system like 2.3 had? Just for topic view though :L

[Rheddy]

I have to agree. I liked the old system better. We also had the ability to delete older warnings, along with the warning description attached to someone's account. When IPS removed that feature (which was an admin function) it was a serious two steps backward for the warning system.

[GreenLinks]

Can you give us some more information, Greenlinks on what you changed to make it more usable for your community?

The biggest change we applied is connecting Report system with Warnings.

An example from postbit http://d.pr/i/5euj

When you click on Add Warning , it will open an overlay to easily add a warning to the user http://d.pr/i/W7Z8

As you can see there are specific area's where a moderator needs to fill in .

When a user is warned , it also automatically closes the Report and copy the warning reason to report .

[NewRockRabbit]

GL, your first link returns 'page not found'.

Your overlay to add a warning to user is cool. :smile: (and useful)

[newbie LAC]

GL, your first link returns 'page not found'.

Remove a space at the end of the link
http://d.pr/i/5euj

[Makoto]

The warning system is really a big headache for me. It requires way too much manual labor to use properly. It's one of the things I've most wanted to see improvements made to.

First, let's give some examples.

When you give a user a standard warning and require them to acknowledge it before posting again, here is what they see:

3 lines of unformatted text. Great. Now, let's step back and view this from the eyes of your average user.

I see that I've been warned for Abusive Behavior in a topic. But what post was it that got me warned? What was it I said?

I won't know unless they notice that the "Test topic!" text at the end is a direct link to the post I've been warned for.

Why can't the post I'm being warned for just be displayed here directly?

And what does this mean? I'm given "1 points." 1 point of what? Am I competing for a high score somewhere? What are these "points" I'm being given?

Here's another example. This time we've suspended the user:

When I try and access the site, I get this error page. It says my account has been suspended and tells me the time/date the suspension will expire (assuming that's using an accurate timezone, which it's not). Well, I was only suspended for an hour, and it's currently 7:45AM here. So according to this, my suspension lasts for another 6 hours. It would be nice if the page just displayed the remaining time of my suspension instead.

Moving on, why was I warned? I have to click this "More details" link to get a pop-up that explains the warning.

"Warning issued by Kirito for Abusive Behaviour in Test topic!. "

Well, this sure isn't very helpful. I don't understand what I've been suspended for. I guess I should click the link to the post that warranted the warning so I can get a better understanding of why I was suspended.

But wait, we can't do that, we're suspended! We're suspended, and we can't even view the post that we were suspended for.

All of these problems staff have to compensate for with every single warning they make.

That means every single time they suspend a member, they have to manually quote the offending post and copy and paste it into the warning notes.

Now say you're the administrator of a popular board and it's not uncommon for you to have to hand out warnings on a frequent basis.

Chances are you have a list of common offenses. IP.Board lets you create and associate severity levels (warning points) and default actions (suspensions, moderation, etc.) for these common offenses. That's great. It saves you about 15 seconds of inputting this information in manually.

Now how about explaining what these offenses mean to the user? Say you don't allow asking for likes/reputation in posts on your forum and you've warned a user for doing just this. It's a minor offense, and you might have this offense named something like "Requesting reputation". To be fair, this one is fairly self-explanatory, but there are some that can be much more ambiguous.

For something of this nature, you could easily send the user a warning using a template like this:

{user},
 
Your account has received a warning strike for {warn_reason}. This warning is being issued in response to the following post you made:
{warned_post}
 
Please remember that it is against forum guidelines to request people give you reputation.
 
This policy is in place to prevent abuse of the reputation system. It gets annoying when people are constantly asking for "upvotes" in all of their posts. Because of this, we don't allow users to ask for reputation in any of the posts or comments they make.
 
You aren't being punished for this, this is just a notice to make sure you're aware of our guidelines regarding reputation.
 
If you have any questions or concerns over this policy, please feel free to contact us.

Implementing an effective warn "templating" system might be difficult, but I think it would be extremely useful to have. Even a "multi-moderation" type system for warnings where it only requires you to click a single button to automatically warn the user and send them a detailed message explaining the warning.

At the very least, I do think significant improvements could be made to the warnings system in various areas.

There are only a few of the problems I've personally had. I don't want to clutter this page with too much tl;dr.

[fadedturbulence]

The biggest change we applied is connecting Report system with Warnings.

An example from postbit http://d.pr/i/5euj

When you click on Add Warning , it will open an overlay to easily add a warning to the user http://d.pr/i/W7Z8

As you can see there are specific area's where a moderator needs to fill in .

When a user is warned , it also automatically closes the Report and copy the warning reason to report .

Yeah, that overlay is really nice. I agree, something like this (and/or other suggestions too) will hopefully be added in v4.

[wimg]

4.0 has a "Revoke" button to take a previous warning away which will decrease the warning points.

That is a good first step :D.

Warm regards, Wim

[wimg]

Some very good suggestions here - we struggle a lot, and the current system requires a lot of moderator time and causes a lot users who are warned to be angry indeed.

If you can overhaul the warn / report system to provide the functionality suggested, that would indeed be great.

Warm regards, Wim

[Mark]

Only decrease points? What about:

- Remove restrictions added by the moderator (Moderate content, Remove ability to create content, Suspend)
- Unban the member
- Move the user to his/her original group, if the moderator changed it.

Yeah, it does all that too... it revokes the warning as if you hadn't done it.

[Mark]

The biggest change we applied is connecting Report system with Warnings.

An example from postbit http://d.pr/i/5euj

When you click on Add Warning , it will open an overlay to easily add a warning to the user http://d.pr/i/W7Z8

As you can see there are specific area's where a moderator needs to fill in .

When a user is warned , it also automatically closes the Report and copy the warning reason to report .

The report system in 4.0 is also much better and does integrate with the warning system better too... We actually use a modal window which dismisses after submitting too - great minds clearly think alike! :smile:

[wimg]

Can we have a choice regarding modal windows? I really hate them.

If you really have to, do please implement them in proper templates, rather than pieces of js code or even purely generated by the back-end. I have come across too many which cannot be modified to really look like I'd want to. Some of the embedded js even gets overridden by generated code, so one can't even use the "new template" stuff in the js parts of a template to override how it looks.

Warm regards, Wim

[Kyle F]

Honestly though, the old 2.3.x warning system was better. I liked the old Topic View part too. It's a shame IPS changed it..

No warning level:

With warning level(s):

This way in topic view was great. There was no issue with it yet it got changed. :L And now it sucks. This is why you see some topics of me asking for help to change things on my 3.4.x board that resembles IP.Board 2.3.x..because how 2.3.x was developed was nice, it was basic. It wasn't as ridiculously "complex" to use.

[chilihead]

A note section would be great. So many times I need to add a note about a user. This note system should be tied to bans and warnings, but also be accessible alone.

User Profile > Notes (where you can enter a note, and view all notes left here directly, or left when a ban or warning was given).

When you ban or warn, a box appears to add a note. All of these notes can be seen at once in the profile of the user in the admin section.

Thanks

[Adriano Faria]

User Profile > Notes (where you can enter a note, and view all notes left here directly, or left when a ban or warning was given).

When you ban or warn, a box appears to add a note. All of these notes can be seen at once in the profile of the user in the admin section

There goes another hook of mine... 2 in a single topic!

It isn't tied to warn system but easy enough to do.

[bfarber]

You can issue a warning without making any changes to the account or increasing the warning points, leaving a note for moderators when you do FYI. I know this ties notes to "warnings", but it may be useful for some reading this topic.

[Makoto]

You can issue a warning without making any changes to the account or increasing the warning points, leaving a note for moderators when you do FYI. I know this ties notes to "warnings", but it may be useful for some reading this topic.

When you warn users without increasing their waning points, wasn't a bug reported that the user is not notified of the warning in this situation?

I don't remember if that was fixed or delayed for 4.0.

[bfarber]

When you warn users without increasing their waning points, wasn't a bug reported that the user is not notified of the warning in this situation?

I don't remember if that was fixed or delayed for 4.0.

In the scenario described above, that's what they would want to happen. The previous posts I was referring to were talking about leaving generic notes on a user account - I was saying that is possible if you go through the warning system to do it. I don't think the posters wanted notifications to be sent.

(FWIW regarding your question, I can't recall every bug ever reported lol - that may or may not have been a bug at some point, and if it was I couldn't tell you off hand if it's fixed at present or not)

[Makoto]

In the scenario described above, that's what they would want to happen. The previous posts I was referring to were talking about leaving generic notes on a user account - I was saying that is possible if you go through the warning system to do it. I don't think the posters wanted notifications to be sent.

I know, that's why I asked though.

If it's considered a bug like this, that means it's going to be fixed (changed) so it does send notifications in 4.0, yes? (So just commenting on it to avoid confusion when that functionality changes)

Also, even if it doesn't send notification, the user could still view the warning just by looking at their account warnings, so they might get confused when they see they have a random warning for something without any member notes associated with it.

[Jim McClain]

What about those of us who don't use warning systems. I'm using vB 3.8.x now and no warnings or reputation. When I convert to IPS 4, I'd like to implement that same policy. Can warnings be turned off?

Thanks,

Jim