Wedge

(1 file, 1KB, 1 line)

Revision: 52
Author: arantor
Date: 04 October 2012 16:19:41
Message:
! [Topic Solved] Bah, was calling the permissions function wrong. No idea why this didn't show in testing before. (TopicSolved-MessageIndex.php)
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Modified : /topic_solved/src/TopicSolved-MessageIndex.php

If in doubt, say it. What annoys me is not people who have ideas or who don't know what they're talking about, what annoys me is the feeling of having to explain myself multiple times for the feeling of not being listened to. (Yup, that is certainly one of my failings. I don't mind people doing something different to what I recommend but I will damn well be heard in so doing!)

The only silly ideas are the ones people don't apply a little bit of thought to before voicing.It is not trivial nor is it a problem that you're alone in facing. I've been trying to learn Unity 3D lately, and despite having spent hours banging my head off a wall, I haven't yet been able to face starting a topic to ask a simple question for exactly that same reason. You're not alone.

Huh, if it's the latest from both trees, I see no reason why it shouldn't work! But I'll investigate when I'm done with what I'm doing right this moment.

I do not see this as a problem, other software has it out of the box, and there are mods for most forums that don't offer it out of the box.If they're *really* looking for trouble, it's not that hard to figure out that it's in place, but no more so than any other method.I'm not entirely sure trolls do this. For the trolls that are smart enough to do this, even an IP ban wouldn't make a fat lot of difference because they'll be using proxies.

The point is not to be a single catch-all magic bullet. It's to deal with enough of the pains in the neck who aren't quite smart enough to realise they're being trolled.If no-one can see their posts...I've been a proponent for this for a while - the problem is keeping it performant. This can trivially handle live, deleted, not-yet-approved posts.

Ignored is a complicated one because it's not simply ignored. It's 'ignored, unless the author is the current person' which starts to get expensive.

Hidden... I don't like the idea. I fail to see a situation where you'd ever want to legitimately do that.

Scheduled, very definitely should be in a separate table. There's all sorts of issues that relate to that, as I've been discovering with Game Memorial.For dealing with spammers, you don't really want to ignore the posts, you'd want them all to disappear, so surely it would be an account level thing not a post level thing?

As far as future posts goes, sure, that's a per-post flag.User can view their own posts normally and freely quote and reply, even if hellbanned. Otherwise as stated.It's certainly interesting and that's why I'm bringing it up now :)

Well, it is exactly a variation on Annoy User - Annoy User is explicitly errorbanning and slowbanning as described above, and it comes with all the passive aggressive mentality, it's just one step beyond.

I've been debating bringing Annoy User into the core too - for those persistent pains in the neck that a typical ban would not deal with.

As far as quoted posts go, yes, you'd see quoted posts. But since no-one but admins would see the original posts, there wouldn't be any opportunity to quote them. All you'd have is a period of overlap where the posts would be able to be quoted but it would die off soon enough. This is where you get into the realm of users who were once good members but have gone bad.

Essentially, actually, I'm thinking you'd have to go through several lines of warning before this even became an option anyway, so it wouldn't affect anyone except the most persistent irritations.

This is a slightly odd proposal but here me out.

People often want to make sub-categories. While you can certainly use sub-boards for organisation, categories do offer a clearer method of organisation - you don't just get to separate boards into a hierarchy, you can create a sideways hierarchy or sorts too.

And it occurred to me: if you create a category as a type of board, you get to create sub-categories, apply permissions, and probably even simplify the code should you want to do so.

Thoughts?

I've been thinking about this for some time. As part of my extensions into the warning/banning system deal, I've been considering adding this in as a last resort.

Hellbanning, or global ignore, is an option whereby all topics and posts by a user are invisible to everyone except themselves. The idea is that they can post freely without realising that no-one else can see their nonsense.

There are some interesting asides to it:

1. Performance is likely negligibly affected, if implemented in the core. As a plugin it's a bit different but probably not that significant. (It's just way cleaner if I make it part of the core)

2. If the user was once a meaningful participant, it could be awkward to hide all the posts and topics as if they never happened, meaning you almost have to consider making it a filter applied at the post level to block a user's contributions after a given point (which *does* bring in all kinds of performance considerations)

3. There are potential issues with hiding posts - you never actively tell the user that they're being punished, but that's part of the point. Never telling them means they don't know, and beat themselves against a wall until they leave. It also means they never have a way to defend themselves or represent themselves.


Basically, I want to give people tools to be able to manage their communities. I want them to be able to deal with troublemakers and have whatever tools will be able to do that effectively. This is why I want to make the warning system more granular, so that instead of very broad levels of punishment (watched/moderated/post banned), you can have punishments that suit every level of troublemaker, right up from inappropriate signatures and avatars (temporary/permanent removal of specific privileges) through to inappropriate content (various tools that I don't want to mention yet, heh[nb]I have some... interesting... ideas that I don't want to spoil yet but that will really help with dealing with troublemakers IMO), and generally inappropriate behaviour (moderation, inability to login/browse, i.e. bans)

The other matters, removal of privileges etc. are fairly subtle but ultimately quite 'safe' punitive measures - a user who is subject to them knows that they are subject to them. But a user subject to hellbanning - or, for that matter, the annoy-user measures such as slowbanning[1] or errorbanning[2] - would not know they are subject to them. They can log out and not see these things, and before anyone so much as breathes 'by IP address' (:P) I would remind them that IP addresses are not reliable and that such things will cause people to be punished unnecessarily and unfairly.

Especially if, say, it's applied to a university or workplace range where proxies are in place. Getting another IP address is not a problem for anyone determined enough to really cause havoc anyway.

I'm also aware that this concept is absolutely nothing new, I just want to be sure that if I do implement it, it is with the best of intentions and that I put in safeguards to try and prevent it from being any more abused than it could be; I don't want to wrap admins' hands in kid gloves but I don't want to hand them a loaded gun either. This sort of measure is not a first resort for troublemakers, it is a last resort, and I want the system to reflect that.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

1.	Delaying the user's page loads.
2.	Throwing error messages to users.