Chippy365

Hi there,
I have recently been adding a new dark theme to our community and I noticed that the Twitter Embeds still return the "light" theme for the embed.
I can't find anywhere within the theme settings that can be set to designate the theme as a "dark theme", thus returning the dark version of a tweet embed.
Essentially it needs the URL to include the parameter "data-theme" with the values either light or dark. Would it be possible to set this in the theme settings?
It will save our users having such a contrast between tweets and the dark theme.

You've basically hit the nail on the head - this is an old school forum that has existed for years and years where a certain style of moderation has been accepted by the community.

I take the points on board with respect to moderation etc. - but believe me, moving the community from PHPBB to IPB was hard enough and required reassurances that the rules, moderation etc would remain the same. It turns out a community of 30-50 year old men really do not like any change! 😂
Lindy - How customisable are the little badges? I note that there are badges for new members and moderators, but if it's possible to customise the badges that could so the issue somewhat.

In fairness, I posted the topic because I felt the idea of a little badge that says when a user has been banned would be better suited for being in the native application rather than trying to work around it with plugins etc, but it's helpful 🙂
It would arguably be of more use than having a moderator badge when there are group names in the post 🙂

In fairness most users have said that they find this aspect useful, that they can scroll through a page. We've had a lot of mixed reaction though and I can understand both arguments. Unfortunately it makes it very difficult for us to provide a fix and considering that IPS are now by all accounts improving the user customisation for behaviours such as topics, it would be really useful to have the same to determine whether quotes are expanded or not - incorporating @Paul E. idea of a community default as well.

First of all, thanks for the ability to collapse quotes, it is very useful.
However, since we rolled out the update, we've had a very mixed response, and it appears to be like marmite, with some users despising it and others loving it.
Would it be possible to set the default action for quotes as to whether to expand or collapse them please? Much like preferences for opening topic links is customisable, so should the default action for quotes.
 

Thanks Matt. I appreciate it adds more technical debt and I'm more than happy to see how it goes - it's an ongoing battle we have with an older community who are largely very resistant to change! I'll let you know if we continue to get complaints in a few weeks.

First of all, thanks for the ability to collapse quotes, it is very useful.
However, since we rolled out the update, we've had a very mixed response, and it appears to be like marmite, with some users despising it and others loving it.
Would it be possible to set the default action for quotes as to whether to expand or collapse them please? Much like preferences for opening topic links is customisable, so should the default action for quotes.
 

Thanks Matt. I appreciate it adds more technical debt and I'm more than happy to see how it goes - it's an ongoing battle we have with an older community who are largely very resistant to change! I'll let you know if we continue to get complaints in a few weeks.

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?
 

Hi there,
I wonder if it would be possible to add a little shield or indication for when a user is banned? We've found recently that users can't see if a user is temporarily suspended and I feel it would be a very useful feature to have within the software

Hi there,
I wonder if it would be possible to add a little shield or indication for when a user is banned? We've found recently that users can't see if a user is temporarily suspended and I feel it would be a very useful feature to have within the software

So, the Ignore feature is extremely lacking in all of what should probably be essential functionality. Currently, by default, you can only ignore someone's: Forum Posts, Messages, Signatures, and Mentions. While that's great and all, it's an extremely simplistic view of an Ignore/Block function. All major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc) have a way to Block and/or Ignore a user account. This hides all of that user's comments and contents and/or blocks them from viewing your content and profile. This is a major oversight in functionality that's missing in the IPS software. Not to mention that the Ignore function misses almost all of the other IPS default applications (Pages, Blogs, Gallery, Downloads, Calendar, Statuses, etc). The entire Ignore function feels like it was just slapped on to solve a singular issue (Forums) and never touched again. What an Ignore / Block function should be able to do:
Ignore all or some of a user's content. Block a user from contacting you (Blocking messages and mentions). Blocking a user from your profile and content. Most users prefer Ease of Use with this. If you're blocking someone, you (usually) have a good reason to. The current ignore feature on IPS is basically bare-bones and doesn't really do a great job at what it does. It can definitely be better, and hopefully this can start that.
 
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Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. However, all the Swiss league records were unfortunately destroyed in a fire, and we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

We've had issues with this too.
We migrated from PHPBB which had a true blocking system. I've found the implementation of IPB's ignore system lacking, really. When people look to ignore, they're looking to block them as they expect the feature to be similar to the blocking systems present on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, but also of other forums such as PHPBB.
We've had various forum users on our community say that the ignore feature is bugged, when in actual fact it's the implementation that should be looked at because users are expecting it to work the same as a block feature.

As an administrator of a fairly rowdy old school community I can tell you that such a tool would not help as much as you think.
1. IP Addresses can be avoided by going through a VPN (Or simply using their mobile phone network).
2. Cookies can be deleted and under GDPR users have to accept cookies being placed on their computer which gives the game away a little.

The way we approach it is that all new user accounts have to be validated by email address and approved by an administrator. There is a little tool in the Mod CP (which should be more widely publicised) that can let you see if the IP address matches that of anyone else in your community. This is an indicator but of course, not conclusive.

While I agree that it would be nice for IPB to notify you if a user has "links" to another user, they would also need to make it clear that it is not conclusive and is more for information than anything. It won't stop anyone who is even remotely technically aware and determined. It would simply be a tool to catch the low hanging fruit.

As an administrator of a fairly rowdy old school community I can tell you that such a tool would not help as much as you think.
1. IP Addresses can be avoided by going through a VPN (Or simply using their mobile phone network).
2. Cookies can be deleted and under GDPR users have to accept cookies being placed on their computer which gives the game away a little.

The way we approach it is that all new user accounts have to be validated by email address and approved by an administrator. There is a little tool in the Mod CP (which should be more widely publicised) that can let you see if the IP address matches that of anyone else in your community. This is an indicator but of course, not conclusive.

While I agree that it would be nice for IPB to notify you if a user has "links" to another user, they would also need to make it clear that it is not conclusive and is more for information than anything. It won't stop anyone who is even remotely technically aware and determined. It would simply be a tool to catch the low hanging fruit.

With respect, that's great for you and works for you. The system does not work for us.
There is no functionality within the reports system for moderators to acknowledge that a report has been dealt with or allows a message to be sent to the person reporting.
When a user has been given a timeout during a heated discussion, users continue to reply and don't realise the person has been banned for a week - which causes users to think that the moderators are not taking any action upon reports - when they are.
Now, yes, you could say that moderators could PM the user who gave the report with a response - but IPB allows the PM system to be turned off and our community don't want the PM system enabled.
Because many people receive a timeout from the community for minor infractions, moving users to a "banned group" just is not feasible as it would require us to keep a track of the time that people have been banned for and move people back etc.
Again, we could make a big song and dance with moderators going in to a thread and saying they've banned someone - but that then gives the banned person the notoriety they want and contirbutes to derailing a thread.
Given that IPS have introduced a "shield" to determine whether a user is a moderator or not, I don't see how that is much different to the use case I have provided.

Actually this is a good point. We often have users who for whatever reason, want their account suspending so they can focus on something else - a couple of decades ago it used to be members at university wanting to focus on exams, what we have now is usually members going on holiday who don't want to be able to access the forum while on holiday with their family 😂
It doesn't necessarily need to be a "banned" badge, just a badge to say they are unable to reply for a longer period than would be normal. Being able to customise the badges and when they are applied would be really useful and would have a larger use case than the ones that we would use it for.

Hi there,
I wonder if it would be possible to add a little shield or indication for when a user is banned? We've found recently that users can't see if a user is temporarily suspended and I feel it would be a very useful feature to have within the software

Hi there,
I wonder if it would be possible to add a little shield or indication for when a user is banned? We've found recently that users can't see if a user is temporarily suspended and I feel it would be a very useful feature to have within the software

We've also had a number of requests for it from users in our community. I could have sworn it was once a feature.
It's a community that has moved from PHPBB to IPB, for what it's worth. While I can mention the hover-over option, it's not possible on mobile as far as I know so I think giving admins the option is better. Alternatively, allow it to be an option that can be configured in the UserCP, as it is ultimately a personal preference.