[Solved] Banning management

[Hagar Delest]

One for Terry I think: can we implement something to show in the profile if a user has been banned or not?
It was not really a problem at the beginning of the forum but now the list is rather long and when we check users, there is no way to be sure (except compare the ban list and the user e-mail). See for example that one: memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=45679
I've seen that mod: [MODDB] Inactive and Banned Users` Custom Titles & Avatars.

But in this case, flushing the ban list as mentioned in a previous topic would be useless.

[keme]

Such an indicator should not be visible to all users. Probably only mods and above (not us volunteers, I think), and of course the user should be able to see it in his/her own profile if they're allowed to log in (possibly already implemented?).

[Hagar Delest]

All such spammers should not be visible in the forum since we move all their posts to the Quarantine forum that is purged regularly (but the posts count of the banned user is not reset BTW). But the problem is that they keep appearing in the members list.

Banned users get a message when they are banned. And they see it when they try to log in: Fisrt Bannishment.

Note: I just checked the other topic and in fact we do delete banned users after some time (see here), is it implemented BTW?. So perhaps tagging them is not that important now.

Note that I used to ban both e-mail and username but in fact, if the user can't login, he can't use the mail address anymore so no need for the mods to ban the mail, few clicks spared...

[Hagar Delest]

Note: I just checked the other topic and in fact we do delete banned users after some time (see here), is it implemented BTW?

Well, not yet it seems. I had some time to kill so I've sorted the users having a website link and with 0 posts or having a last active login almost identical to their joining time. I've deleted around 60 users (some having joined in 2008, some already banned).

I fear there are also the users banned with no post and with no website link in their profile who can't be sorted easily (with the phpBB features I mean).

[TerryE]

Thanks Hagar, I was thinking of deleting all indefinitely banned users with 0 posts across all forums. Would that help?

[Hagar Delest]

Yes, all the banned users deserve the deletion.

The gray area remaining is made of users having subscribed with a web link in the profile. Most of them are passive spam I guess but maybe there are some having subscribed to a topic.

NB: I've noticed some increased activity in spam, related to summer vacation? people needing money and registering forums for 3rd party sites?

[TerryE]

Yup, I would be inclined to delete all users with a Website or URI in the signature that have no posts, have registered > 3 months ago and were last active < 1 day after registration.

[Hagar Delest]

Looks fine.

[Hagar Delest]

Thanks to acknak's idea (see this post), I've created a new group for banned users (Banned):
- Username is black
- Avatar is a no-sign
- Rank is "Banned" (shown in the id area and member list)
So we can easily spot them now.
The group is not hidden so that others (other forums for example) can search for banned usernames.

For users to be banned, we can just change their group (instead of all the clicks to ban a user). If they are not banned through the admin/mod panel, their account is still active and they can PM mods if they want to complain. They cannot post, nor change their email.

And we'll have very easily the exact number of banned users.
Still the posts have to be deleted if it still went through in the forum.

[Hagar Delest]

For users to be banned, we can just change their group (instead of all the clicks to ban a user). If they are not banned through the admin/mod panel, their account is still active and they can PM mods if they want to complain. They cannot post, nor change their email.

Well, in fact, this is not true. Even if the default group is changed, it's just a display, they still have there NRU or RU permissions.

So the banning with the admin or mod panel is still necessary, else, we have to remove them from the NRU & RU groups when adding them to the Banned group). Note that only admins can do that.

Edit: Argh... Checked an user belonging to the 3 groups and the permissions show that he cannot post. But a mod got one banned who was able o post anyway. I'm lost.

[RoryOF]

RTFM time, perhaps...

[floris v]

It's very likely that the messages were posted before the user was banned, that the mod who banned that user didn't immediately tackle the messages.
I saw a set of posts by a user who was banned by another mod who disapproved those messages minutes after he had banned that user, and then he banned him again for good measure.
Regardless, we seem to have got rid of the spam flooding for the time being.