Public message board information

[Jools]

With reference to this topic: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=33792&p=572509#p572455 and specifically this:

User was warned for this post; Felony 1, Felony 4.

3rd warning; ban. Not sure of the duration of your previous one, must have been at least your second ban (2 weeks) therefore double duration is 1 month, minimum. Ban evasion will result in doubling for each account made.

-- FLOZi

How is it possible that the admins do not know the duration of one user's ban? Or does this just mean that the information wasn't readily available?

And some other thoughts along this topic: shouldn't all information of this type be public? Is there a link where I can see all active bans and maybe also those administered during the last year or so? There certainly should be a list like this available, at least for admins.

Why? Because one task that the admins have is to manage the community, and how can you manage something you do not have information about? I mean manage that the moderator's actions are along the board rules and that the rules we have are effective. If I were an admin, this list would be one of the first lists that I would compile.

Respectfully,
Jools

moved from site content to here. site content is about screenshots / videos / banners. -- abma

[Silentwings]

The information exists - the complication in this case is likely due to account spam.

[Jools]

Link please...

[smoth]

member list note that these are the known smurfs

Why is this in site content? this is not content.

[Jools]

member list note that these are the known smurfs

Why is this in site content? this is not content.

That's the list of members. It's not so useful for this purpose.

What I want is a list of public actions by admins/moderators, sorted by date for instance. The list should contains at least all bans, durations and the reasons for them.


Of course it is site content. Like similar lists like groups, members, team etc.

[Silentwings]

Of course one can debate the merits and disadvantages of that, but currently the list is not public and afaik phpbb does not offer the feature to make it so.

[gajop]

We have that list here: mcp.php?i=139 , but I think you need to be a moderator to see it. I don't care if it was made available, but I can't think of another site/forum which has these things public. Why would normal users need this info other than to "keep tabs" on mods?
Not sure it's even possible to share this in phpbb..?

[Silentwings]

Pretty sure not, because it contains IPs and some content from private messages to/from us (all report/warning/etc messages are pms iirc).

@Jools: You can contact the moderators group in pm if you have a special reason for needing to know if someone is able to access their account.

[smoth]

What I want is a list of public actions by admins/moderators, sorted by date for instance. The list should contains at least all bans, durations and the reasons for them.

someone's reprimands are none of my or your business. It is not right to publicly shame people that way

Of course it is site content. Like similar lists like groups, members, team etc.

No this section is for media

[smoth]

Why would normal users need this info other than to "keep tabs" on mods?
Not sure it's even possible to share this in phpbb..?

So he can further his Trolling the moderator staff gumming up the works like he is a moral authority. He is not the first person to try this crap where he concern trolls<- Google this term

[raaar]

On other forums banned users are shown as "banned". On this forum you have to guess.

I wouldn't go as far as demanding a full log. There is such a thing as too much transparency and it might inhibit moderators from doing their job, though.

A user having to ask user X directly or moderators to know if user X is currently banned from using the forum isn't reasonable.

EDIT:

Why would normal users need this info other than to "keep tabs" on mods?
Not sure it's even possible to share this in phpbb..?

So he can further his Trolling the moderator staff gumming up the works like he is a moral authority. He is not the first person to try this crap where he concern trolls<- Google this term

What he's asking wouldn't make him more of a moral authority than anyone else.

[smoth]

That I can agree with(the banned title for people who are currently banned)

Since raar edited. Nah I am saying jools is putting himself as some sort of moral authority who needs to constantly(to the point of borderline harassment) question the moderators. Lately I have begun to think he is bored and concern trolling

[Jools]

Pretty sure not, because it contains IPs and some content from private messages to/from us (all report/warning/etc messages are pms iirc).

@Jools: You can contact the moderators group in pm if you have a special reason for needing to know if someone is able to access their account.

I'm responding to this since it's the last post that is respectful and on topic:

Yes, it is in the public interest to know who is able to access their account, and it is a good practise to publish the verdicts. Most tribunals do this (except maybe in North Korea), and there are also game sites that do this. If you want examples, I can find them, but on most sites you still need to login to see those things. In other words, no, I don't want these logs on the plain internet.

But to turn the argument to the other side: what possible reason could there be to have secret verdicts? Isn't the whole point anyway that verdicts follow the forum rules. So what's to be so scared about publishing these? You need to do this if you want to have the transparency stamp anyway.

[Silentwings]

Any warnings/bans that are issued are already visible to all, in the topics where they take place. You might want them in a searchable format, but that's an IT issue and I am not an IT person.

Also, without meaning to sound impolite, this is a forum for developing games, not for political science. If you have a practical reason to need more information, let us know.

[raaar]

bans being visible to all on the topics where they take place isn't enough.

There may be other ongoing discussions taking place and other people will have no idea that some of the participants are unable to post.

Not everyone reads every thread.

[Jools]

Any warnings/bans that are issued are already visible to all, in the topics where they take place. You might want them in a searchable format, but that's an IT issue and I am not an IT person.

They don't need to be searchable, a list is fine. So let's wait for an IT person to respond then shall we...

Also, without meaning to sound impolite, this is a forum for developing games, not for political science. If you have a practical reason to need more information, let us know.

The forum is for developing games, but you know just as well as I do that we are more than just a forum with a bunch of coders. If all we needed were game developers, we would have no need for moderators, lobby hosts, media people, artists etc. We need in fact to manage a bunch of díifferent things, and one of those are projects and people.

It's true that most forums show banned people as simply with the title 'banned', but spring community is not really like just a forum. If you take a forum with a random subject such as hunting, you don't generally have a structure among those members such as we have. They are usually just user to user forums, and in that case you can just ban the random trolls.

But we are not only banning trolls, we are also banning project members, and this is already a reason to make this information more visible than spread out in random threads. I don't think you really mean that we should be polling this information from moderators with IM, say, once a day? In that case I would like to automate it somehow. If is somehow hard to manage IT-wise: just create a thread with banned people that you update each time you ban someone.

It's useful to have this information managed, because threads can be deleted, edited, whatever, and so the information they contain does not tend to be up-to-date.

If the database that the moderators use contains sensitive information, I wonder if we instead could ask why the moderators need to have access to that kind of information? Yes, for finding smurfs, but that could be done without the explicit IP-address and by using only hashes instead. Other sites I have moderated have usually only allowed the founder (that would be our admins) to access sensitive data, and instead let the moderators do their job with less sensitive data instead.

[abma]

your suggestions are maybe good, but i don't think someone has the time and interest to implement / change it, so it won't happen. people do this in their spare time and it has to be fun. bureaucracy mostly isn't fun.

most posters / moderators are developers: imo they shouldn't waste their time on bureaucracy.

-> stick to a doable feature request or it will never happen

we are using phpbb, don't ask us, why phpbb implemented permissions like they are.we didn't configure fancy permissions, we recently tried to make permissions simpler as they are very complicated in phpbb. you have to ask the phpbb developers why ip addresses are shown to moderators.

[smoth]

Ips are shown to moderators so a moderator can have help in identifying a lazy smurf account

[AF]

I liked the 'banned' title, but rather than tracking things using code and phpbb, a trello board would more than suffice. Give people a card and set the due date as their 'unbanning date', put the reason why in the description, along with any smurfs, assign the card to moderator who did the banning, and make it public but read only so people can see if they really have to.

That way everyone knows who is banned, why they're banned, how long, and who banned them

As for sensitive details, that could be a users email address, their logged IPs, etc

[gajop]

I've added it to the thread here: viewtopic.php?f=71&t=31760&p=572633#p572633
There's also a bunch of other stuff that's (imo) more important, but the priority list is really going to depend on the person doing it.

PS: I'm against any third-party solutions or changes that would require us to do additional manual work, but more/better info is needed both for regular users and mods.