Thanks Man I realy appreciate the reply, this hack is a god send and I have often wondered why a system like this was NEVER incorporated into vBull in the first place as it would of saved many Admins a lot of time and heartache.

I was thinking it would be a good idea to try and automate several of the warnings if possible... No idea how it would work but it would be fantastic if it could be pulled off..

Many thanks and heres to looking forward for a VIP fix lol

Ta

H

That's a good suggestion. Try to make it as automatic as possible, too. Points come down, and the offender can get the green light to return. Would be nice if this hack can be written so after the points do come down, an Admin can choose which usergroup the offender can return too. Either his former one, or a moderated one. That's one less followup an Admin needs to do. Set it and forget it.

Sv1cec: thanks for the heads up about the email variations, too. :)

Chris

Any way of setting this hack up where only admins or admins and mods can view the warnings of people. Dont really like the idea of other members being able to view others warning levels.

thanks

You know, when I first read how the system would reset the total to ban level, I thought that it shoud work differently. But at that time it really didn't affect too much, so it wasn't of much concern. Now it does affect the way warnings and bans would expire. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make it keep the total as opposed to resetting it, but if it is too hard, having the 3 points (in your example) would be better than 0. I'm sure whatever changes (if any) that need to be done will be positive.

And I think I need to say this as well. I have been working with vb extensively for a couple of months now on my site, and I have worked on all sorts issues and hacks/fixes. I need to say that the support for this hack (and everything John has done for this warning hack) is far beyond what I have seen even for pay solutions. Thank you John for dedicating this type of time and effort to the community. Your contribution means so much to so many of us. I vote this should be the hack of the month.

OK, let me try to answer some of the latest posts here:

1. I have to thank SamirDarji for the nice words, sincerely appreciated.

2. From next release, points would accumulate and not be reset to the maximum. Please be careful, I do not say that banned members will be unbanned, based on the expiration of the warnings, this is more involved and it might take some time. But if the warning points are not reset, then at least someone can always do the maths and come up with the right answers. As it is today, you may see 4 points, and wonder where are the rest of them, since the totals for the warnings one has received maybe 12 or 15.

3. Automating warnings: I'll check it out today and see how easy it is to implement it in a subversion, or if a new version would be required.

4. For ChrisLM2001, at the moment, the banned member is restored to his previous usergroup when he is unbanned. I can add a Warning Options, in which you could specify the user group in which the member is returned into. Would that help?

5. For fpouk, it can be done, you just have to enclose the part which shows the warning points and bans, in conditionals similar to the ones used for showing the "Warn XYZ" and "View XYZ's Warnings". The question is, if you are using hierarchical, then the Super Mods will be able to see the warning points of the mods. Do you want it that way? For your help, it's in the postbit template (or postbit_legacy).

6. For Shack Networks, if you do not use the hierarchical schema, I think your admins/supermods/mods can warn any other usergroup. I'll change it so that this works that way, even with hierarchical.

7. For Shack Networks, as for your list idea, I can check what it means to check the words against a list and add a warning automatically. As for the web sites list, I think this can wait, I am not sure I have the expertise to do it, so maybe in release... 12.0.0. LoL

OK, if you guys don't make me answer so many posts here I would have time to work more on the hack. See you later, I am going to make the "to do" list and start working.

Rgds
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John

OK folks, some of your wishes have become a reality.

I just uploaded version 1.3, which answers your requests for:

- Being able to warn users belonging to other usergroups than "registered users"
- Being able to define who can see the warning level and the number of bans of your members, in postbit (it's either "All" or "Mgm" which stands for management team)
- Being able to define a user group in which your banned users get restored, when they get unbanned. I HAVE NOT TESTED THIS THING, I DO NOT HAVE A WAY TO TEST IT, SO WHOVEVER ASKED FOR IT, TRY IT AND LET ME KNOW.

I also added a new report, in the AdminCP, which allows you to see which of your members have been warned.

I still need to check the issue about the restricted words.

Rgds
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John

your the best!!!! Cheers

Updating it now.

updated everything seems to be working fine.

One question, when peoples bans run out, they are automatically unbanned andthire warnings are reset to 0? Right? Or do the warnings stay untill they have done their course? Say the warning was for 30 days, would that we wiped or would it stay?

Warnings stay, they are not removed when the user gets unbanned.

Rgds
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John

oh right, so i have to remove them manually then?

No, the warnings will be removed when they mature. You do not have to do it manually.

Rgds

For Shack Networks, regarding the suggestion to automatically warn a member, if he uses censored words.

I tried to figure out, how I can use vBulletin's censored words for that, and I've managed to figure out how it works. All I need now, is to find out where to place the warning function, and a couple of other things. Is this a satisfactory solution for you, or not?

Let me know, so that I do not go around chasing my tail.

Mumble...
Does a moderator warn an user only for his forum, and the ban will be applied (by access masks) only for that forum?

The mdoerators can only warn within their own forums only.

As for ban applying to certain forums only, I am sorry, it is general. Ban is ban from all the forums.

Rgds

So you tell me that a moderator CAN warn an user and the warn is cumulable with all the warn received from different moderators?
So more than one moderator, if in agreement between they, could ban an user with opportune warnings?

(sorry for my english... I hope you understand what I mean :| )

I'm trying to know if this system, with a little modification, could be closer to my needs..

Yes.

You are trying to solve a .... hardware problem with software. Or in other words, you are trying to solve a policy issue with a software tool. If your forums have rules, and if the moderators are working with rules themselves, and if your warning types are correct, and if you have mundated that all deleted threads do not get deleted but are moved to a special forum and if..... then the moderators can not do the conspiracy.

If I wouldn't trust my moderators to do their job properly, I would change moderators.

Rgds

Oh you are a one man wonder m8 lol

This is spot on what I was thinking of..

Thanks and I look forward to testing and playing with it :)

H

yes this (automatic warning) would be very good, i'd use this if you could get it to work.

Your're absolutely right (and your hack is cool :devious: ).
But people is so fool.

Mumble.. I got lot of private forum and every forum has strange rules. So moderators apply own rules per forum... And your hack, distribuited per single forum (and not for the whole system) could be the solution for my.. ehm... strange community! ;)

Hmm...bans and warnings on a per forum basis. I wonder how hard this would be to implement?

[thinking out loud]
I guess there would be warnings that would have to be implemented on a per forum basis. And then bans also on a per forum basis. But since banning from an individual forum isn't part of vb's original design, all of that would have to be created. Hmmm...definitely not a quick bit of coding.
[/thinking out loud]

Regarding the automatic ban, what I've done so far, is to compare the original text written by the poster, with the text returned by the censor routine. If they are not the same, then we have censorship, which means the poster used bad words.

This I can trap and return it to the newreply.php file, I tested it yesterday. I get all the required info, userid, post id, etc. Now, I have to figure out (a) where to put the warning code so that it is used for either a new reply or a new thread or whatever and (b) how to code it, so that it does warn properly. Several issues have to be resolved, for example, there should be a specific warning type, which you should create and which will be known to the program (that's an issue, what if the program expects to find warning 999 and you have created 888?) etc.

As for the warning and banning per forum, that can be quite a bit of work, I do not see it coming unless vB changes some things in the code.

Rgds

WOW! Now this is support! :D

That will be perfect. Sometimes when members return they still may need to be monitored for a while, so it'll be nice to automatically send former banned members to a watch usergroup. That way the Admin can choose later to reintroduce them to the community, when s/he's sure the member has cooled off (especially after a fight on the forums and there's some ire still left).

Chris

Chirs, what do you mean "That will be perfect"? I have already implemented this, in version 1.3

Unfortunatelly, you would have to be the one to test this feature out. Download and install and let me know how it works. Remember to go to the Warning Options and define the "restore" group.

Please test it out, or else you will have to wait until Monday or Tuesday for me to test it.

Rgds

Just downloaded it again and will applying it in a moment. Will let you know how it turns out.

Chris

Installed it and except for an error installing the phrases (needed to manually add the table prefix) it seems to be working. Haven't tested to see if it'll warn/ban anyone yet...lol.

Have one question: what is the warning maturity level? The other fields are explainable, but that one I don't know.

All in all it's a nice hack, with a lot of options (install it!!). :) :) :)

Chris

the warning maturity level is the lenght of time the warning stays "active" for the user. If you set this to 9 then the warning will go away after 9 days.

Hope that helps

one questions for you sv1cec, is it possible to include the name of the person banning the member to be included in the email and / or the pm

If you do not use the Hidden Warner feature, then the name of the moderator/admin/supermod is listed both in the PM and e-mail, as well as in the reports. The hidden warner is used by those admins, who do not want to reveal to the end-members, who the warner was.

Just set the Hidden Warner value to 0 and the real warn will .... warn!

Rgds

The maturity is the number of days the points of a warning will afffect the warned member's account. At the end of the maturity period, the cron job automatically removes those points from the member's account.

Rgds

I just uploaded a new version, with some minor changes.

The report, I've added yesterday, was not correct. In order to show you which members have been warned, it was checking the warning level of the users. However, a user may have a warning level of zero points, and still have received warnings, which have expired or were deleted. So I added another column in the user table, where I keep the number of warnings a user has received and changed the report accordingly. The upgrade is an easy one, two or three things to do.

Rgds
--------
John

thankyou, just updating now

Get an error

ALTER TABLE `user` ADD COLUMN `warnings` int(5) before warning_level

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'before warning_level' at line 1

Wow, this is getting better by the day! :D
I do however have some questions:

1. The warning sys I use now cumulates warning points until my set value is reached, then it auto bans. With this maturity level system, do I have to set the maturity to insanely high to have cumulating work as it does now, or can it auto ban no matter how long ago it has been since he was warned?
2. Does a member see his own warning level? If no, then I submit it as a feature suggestion :)

Im sorry if these have already been answered before, but 8 pages of replies.... neeh ;)

And @ mcyates: Try running the query without the "column" word. I have never seen this in a SQL query, and I have added fields to the user table before (in fact I did this just north of 3h ago ;))


//peace

that didn't help, i still got the warning, the code it from the latest upgrade so i don't see why its not working:

I upgraded to 1.3 and am getting the following error when trying to warn someone:

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.3:

Invalid SQL: insert into vb3warnings values('','11','1','1101609844','test 1.3','464','1','A','','')
mysql error: Column count doesn't match value count at row 1

mysql error number: 1136

I am also getting this error when trying to upgrade to 1.3.1

Ok. I fixed the above by running the following:

I looked @ the table structure and the new column should be inserted between `salt` and `warning_level`. I took a peek @ the ALTER TABLE documentation and didn't see a BEFORE parameter, but did see an AFTER parameter, so decided to try that.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/ALTER_TABLE.html

I have ZT's warn hack (1.5) and get the following error when I run the admincp/upgrade_warn.php script:

Any idea what is wrong?

Also, I downloaded the code last night (November 27th, 2004)...

1. BEFORE and AFTER parameter in SQL.

I would swear I used before, but I may be wrong. I'll change the documentation.

2. Revan's question. Two different things here, the maturity is the number of days that the points stay in a user's account. It doesn't pay to warn a user for a minor thing (maybe one point) and keep that warning point for ever. If you do not want that to happen, yes, you need to set the maturity of the warnings to something like 99999.

Yes, a member sees a link, which shows him his own warnings.

3. Torqued. If the column hasn't been added because of the mistake that mcyates reported, and which you were also getting, it's normal to receive an incorrect columns error. Now that you added the column, does it still produces that error?

4. Ptenthus, change that line (185) from

to:

Those damn quotes are the problem.

OK folks, sorry for these issues, I am trying my best.

Rgds
---------
John