Better representation of a banned user

[jesuralem]

It should be fairly easy to do a plugin that displays a "banned" badge on the user's postbit, although i have to say i honestly do not know how to do it.

Nobody interested in coding such a plugin ?

[Miss_B]

14 minutes ago, jesuralem said:

It should be fairly easy to do a plugin that displays a "banned" badge on the user's postbit, although i have to say i honestly do not know how to do it.

Nobody interested in coding such a plugin ?

You can request such a plugin at the request forum. It might receive more attention there.

https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/forum/506-customization-requests/

[jesuralem]

you are right

[Lindy]

On 10/25/2020 at 12:13 PM, Chippy365 said:

 

Unfortunately not - moderators are instead editing the post that gets a user banned to say that the user has been banned for the particular post. It's not ideal but at least users are aware the user has been banned so they don't expect a reply anymore.

Wouldn't it be easier to create a 'Banned' group for visual representation if you're going through that trouble?

[CoffeeCake]

58 minutes ago, Lindy said:

Wouldn't it be easier to create a 'Banned' group for visual representation if you're going through that trouble?

Don't forget limitations imposed from moderation via accumulation of warning points. There's validity in use cases where people who cannot participate in a discussion are represented as such. I think the issue may be that we naturally want to assume "banned" means "bad." "Banned" is simply a name assigned to it for its most common use case, however there are reasons in which members are set into a "cannot post on the site right now" for an infinite number of reasons. In our community, we use these features, yet rename all of these terms through translation to reflect how we use them. It's a good sign that the software offers that degree of flexibility.

Some communities are managed where moderators are only able to apply warnings, and cannot change usergroups. There's no permission presently to restrict the usergroups one can move a member into. Remember principle of least privilege.

Things that work for Communities A, B, and C, may not work in D, E, or F. Reputation/karma points are a good example. Even though there are communities that would never show things like the leaderboard, or "who won the day" because they simply don't fit the culture, doesn't invalidate the value in having it as an option for the platform.

[TDBF]

17 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

Don't forget limitations imposed from moderation via accumulation of warning points. There's validity in use cases where people who cannot participate in a discussion are represented as such. I think the issue may be that we naturally want to assume "banned" means "bad." "Banned" is simply a name assigned to it for its most common use case, however there are reasons in which members are set into a "cannot post on the site right now" for an infinite number of reasons. In our community, we use these features, yet rename all of these terms through translation to reflect how we use them. It's a good sign that the software offers that degree of flexibility.

Some communities are managed where moderators are only able to apply warnings, and cannot change usergroups. There's no permission presently to restrict the usergroups one can move a member into. Remember principle of least privilege.

Things that work for Communities A, B, and C, may not work in D, E, or F. Reputation/karma points are a good example. Even though there are communities that would never show things like the leaderboard, or "who won the day" because they simply don't fit the culture, doesn't invalidate the value in having it as an option for the platform.

Disagree,

When you label someone as banned you are in a sense classing this as a bad person and parading this information to all your other members. Other members don't need to know who is banned or not, as someone else pointed out, it is none of their damn business.

It is like sites who create a whole topic to let others know that 'John Doe' is banned for X and X amount of time. If I see these types of posts, I will not join that community, period!

The only people that need to know who is banned, is your admin and your moderators. I have found over the years having Banned all over your site just creates more issues, like people asking why so and so was banned and how unfair it was of you to ban them.

Move on from 20 years ago and make moderation invisible to your users.

For example. When I moderate someone, the moderation is between the site staff and the person moderated. We never ever discuss moderation with anyone other than the person moderated and we learnt this the hard way. All you are doing is setting your self up for a world of hurt if you start explaining or posting your moderation reasons to all your members.

And for those saying that your members are too old to change, tosh! They might not like it at first, but they will get used to the changes. I generally find my members are more accepting if I explain to them why I am making the changes first. FYI, most of my members are in their 50's, football fans, and arrogant assholes, and if they can get used to change then anyone can!

Edited October 28, 2020 by TDBF

[Adriano Faria]

26 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

Some communities are managed where moderators are only able to apply warnings, and cannot change usergroups.

 

[CoffeeCake]

2 minutes ago, TDBF said:

When you label someone as banned you are in a sense classing this as a bad person and parading this information to all your other members.

I don't think you understood. If you label someone as "banned," yes that would have a negative connotation. Maybe, in a community where people like to be admonished, that's a not a bad thing. Who are we to judge? However, what I said was (emphasis added):

19 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

I think the issue may be that we naturally want to assume "banned" means "bad." "Banned" is simply a name assigned to it for its most common use case, however there are reasons in which members are set into a "cannot post on the site right now" for an infinite number of reasons. In our community, we use these features, yet rename all of these terms through translation to reflect how we use them. It's a good sign that the software offers that degree of flexibility.

If you translate "banned" so that everywhere it appears on IPS, the word is replaced with "Member Requested Account Deactivation," there is no negative connotation. It's all in how the community is run. Adding a feature to the software that is toggled on or off (or giving individuals the ability to do something easily via CSS modifications), doesn't mean your community needs to do what other people need to do. Try to imagine how others may use something, even if it isn't how you might.

This is a feature request, not a religious debate. Some folks find it valuable. I think it would be kind practice here to only comment on someone's feature request when:

1. You like the idea, and see how it could work for others/yourself
2. You're concerned that the implementation of the idea might change how you use the platform, and want to be sure that your use cases are considered

Speculating about how you would never personally benefit from something as a measure of the validity of the customer feedback left here by saying "I don't get this and would never use this" is akin to saying "I don't have the desire to exercise the taking on of the perspective of others to see things from their worldview." I think we can be better than that.

[TDBF]

21 minutes ago, Paul E. said:

I don't think you understood. If you label someone as "banned," yes that would have a negative connotation. Maybe, in a community where people like to be admonished, that's a not a bad thing. Who are we to judge? However, what I said was (emphasis added):

If you translate "banned" so that everywhere it appears on IPS, the word is replaced with "Member Requested Account Deactivation," there is no negative connotation. It's all in how the community is run. Adding a feature to the software that is toggled on or off (or giving individuals the ability to do something easily via CSS modifications), doesn't mean your community needs to do what other people need to do. Try to imagine how others may use something, even if it isn't how you might.

This is a feature request, not a religious debate. Some folks find it valuable. I think it would be kind practice here to only comment on someone's feature request when:

1. You like the idea, and see how it could work for others/yourself
2. You're concerned that the implementation of the idea might change how you use the platform, and want to be sure that your use cases are considered

Speculating about how you would never personally benefit from something as a measure of the validity of the customer feedback left here by saying "I don't get this and would never use this" is akin to saying "I don't have the desire to exercise the taking on of the perspective of others to see things from their worldview." I think we can be better than that.

My point is, why do you even need to label a member banned (regardless off how you mean it or want it representent). Just Ban them and be done with it. As I said, why does anyone apart from your moderators and staff need to know that John Doe is banned (in any shape or form)?

Please tell me why you feel the need to share this information to your members and what benefit it is for your community?

Edited October 28, 2020 by TDBF

[Chippy365]

11 hours ago, Lindy said:

Wouldn't it be easier to create a 'Banned' group for visual representation if you're going through that trouble?

Moderators don't have the ability to move members between groups. Also not all offences require a permanent ban. Some are suspended for a specific time period like a week etc. We don't move those people because trying to track each member's time period would be much more time consuming.

9 hours ago, TDBF said:

My point is, why do you even need to label a member banned (regardless off how you mean it or want it representent). Just Ban them and be done with it. As I said, why does anyone apart from your moderators and staff need to know that John Doe is banned (in any shape or form)?

Please tell me why you feel the need to share this information to your members and what benefit it is for your community?

With respect, I don't tell you how to moderate your community and you shouldn't tell others how to moderate theirs unless they ask for advice. What works for one community doesn't necessarily work for another. And to be frank, nobody asked for lectures on how to moderate their community so the comments don't really add anything to the discussion other than telling us you moderate your community differently. Great, your moderation style works for your community. It doesn't work for ours. It's almost as though communities are diverse and have different wants and needs 😲

Our community has no need or want for a PM system, can we get that removed and add it as a marketplace plugin instead? I'm being facetious here, but we see this a lot when people post feature requests - there's a subset of people who essentially wade in and say "I have no need for this in my community so maybe it should be a marketplace add-on". It's not productive and puts people off asking for new features.

 

Twitter is a prime example of a major service that labels a user banned when they have been banned or suspended. They even notify you if a user you reported has had action taken against their account. While this would be nice to have - all I am requesting is an extra little icon to be added in the same place where there is an icon for moderators, to denote that the person is currently banned/suspended. For some communities they might not necessarily want the icon to say those words and that's fine, allow it to be translated to inactive or something. If you don't want the icon at all, then allow that to be an option too. There's plenty of features that we deactivate in the forum software because our community doesn't want it.

A number of different use cases have been provided for why such a feature would be useful to some communities. It may not be useful to other communities and that's fine. Nobody is forcing you to use it. The good thing about IPB is you can turn off and on features you don't want. As for moderation styles - I didn't realise that using IPB software also required us to subscribe to a certain ideology of community moderation. Maybe users could let other users moderate our communities as we see fit without providing a sermon and then we could have a more productive discussion?

 

[jesuralem]

10 hours ago, TDBF said:

Please tell me why you feel the need to share this information to your members and what benefit it is for your community?

I have two major use cases :

- Let everyone know that action has been taken following inappropriate behavior, and so prevent others from having the same behaviour

- Inform other members that they should not expect any answer from the banned user either on public discussions, in PMs or anywhere else (classifieds).

I tend to agree with @Chippy365 here, we have a reasonable request, and you come telling us we shouldn't have it, maybe we should just consider that we may manage our communities differently than you. I don't drink coke, i don't go tell people who do that it is a useless and disgusting beverage...

[TDBF]

57 minutes ago, Chippy365 said:

Moderators don't have the ability to move members between groups. Also not all offences require a permanent ban. Some are suspended for a specific time period like a week etc. We don't move those people because trying to track each member's time period would be much more time consuming.

With respect, I don't tell you how to moderate your community and you shouldn't tell others how to moderate theirs unless they ask for advice. What works for one community doesn't necessarily work for another. And to be frank, nobody asked for lectures on how to moderate their community so the comments don't really add anything to the discussion other than telling us you moderate your community differently. Great, your moderation style works for your community. It doesn't work for ours. It's almost as though communities are diverse and have different wants and needs 😲

Our community has no need or want for a PM system, can we get that removed and add it as a marketplace plugin instead? I'm being facetious here, but we see this a lot when people post feature requests - there's a subset of people who essentially wade in and say "I have no need for this in my community so maybe it should be a marketplace add-on". It's not productive and puts people off asking for new features.

 

Twitter is a prime example of a major service that labels a user banned when they have been banned or suspended. They even notify you if a user you reported has had action taken against their account. While this would be nice to have - all I am requesting is an extra little icon to be added in the same place where there is an icon for moderators, to denote that the person is currently banned/suspended. For some communities they might not necessarily want the icon to say those words and that's fine, allow it to be translated to inactive or something. If you don't want the icon at all, then allow that to be an option too. There's plenty of features that we deactivate in the forum software because our community doesn't want it.

A number of different use cases have been provided for why such a feature would be useful to some communities. It may not be useful to other communities and that's fine. Nobody is forcing you to use it. The good thing about IPB is you can turn off and on features you don't want. As for moderation styles - I didn't realise that using IPB software also required us to subscribe to a certain ideology of community moderation. Maybe users could let other users moderate our communities as we see fit without providing a sermon and then we could have a more productive discussion?

 

You mistook my post and my question.

It wasn't meant to be a lecture (Sorry if it came across that way) as I was trying to understand why yourself and others want to let others know that your members have been banned  and I wanted an insight into why your community needs it, but mines doesn't?

[TDBF]

24 minutes ago, jesuralem said:

I have two major use cases :

- Let everyone know that action has been taken following inappropriate behavior, and so prevent others from having the same behaviour

- Inform other members that they should not expect any answer from the banned user either on public discussions, in PMs or anywhere else (classifieds).

I tend to agree with @Chippy365 here, we have a reasonable request, and you come telling us we shouldn't have it, maybe we should just consider that we may manage our communities differently than you. I don't drink coke, i don't go tell people who do that it is a useless and disgusting beverage...

Again, as I said to Chippy, I'm sorry if my post came across the wrong way as it wasn't intended the way you may think or came across.

As someone who has managed communities for over 20 years in one way or another, I have learned through experience as to why we do not show members as banned or discuss moderation with my members in an open forum. I'm not telling you how to run your community, god forbid, all I am saying I do not understand the need to parade one of your members as banned for any reason. If that works for you, then by all means do what works for you and your community. 😀

[Gabriel Torres]

We are old school here -- our website is up and running since 1996, with forums implemented in 2002. I understand what @Lindy says about the times that have changed. However for us here it is important to know when a user has been banned/suspended/restricted at the front-end, because we have several moderators and in a long topic, it is simply impossible to remember who in that topic has received warnings or is banned/suspended. Therefore, a solution to display banned info at the front-end only for staff members would be very useful, while preventing issues with regular users. This is already avaliable in the user's profile page; I mean adding this info at the user's miniprofile that goes along each post.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Gabriel Torres