Infraction System - How to send anonymous PM's
 

<font color="Red">See how in post #14 below!</font>

Is there a way to modify the Infraction system to send a PM via a "generic account" like the "Automatic Mod" this way when you issue the infraction the user can't see who it's from? I am sure this must be easy to do.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Anyone?! Someone must know how to modify this...

Just a cursory review of infraction.php and it looks hard-coded in there...
If you change the code, don't forget other areas for PMs and emails.

Hmmmm.. tried playing with it and I can get it to display nothing in the ISSUED BY filed... but then doesn't update the user's infraction profile...

Any good coders in here able to chime in?

I have no problems modifying code.. I just need to know where and to what. Basically as long as the user can't see who it is from and preferably from a made up name or fake account.

Bump Please

Just create an account to log into when you give infractions.

Why not make an anom account and just put it down as the user that gives the infractions?

But then you have to log out then back in again... Use to have AWS and it let you send warnings from anyone you want.. Just seems so simple to do... Someone on here must have the skills!

Something just seems Wrong about hiding behind anonymous infractions. Are you afraid, or ashamed?

FWIW, we rarely infract immediately, and instead wait for a day's worth of discussion about the problem in the Moderators forum, at which time one of us that doesn't know the person will assume the task of infracting them.

But I've rarely shied away from volunteering for the job. Assuming the violation of the written rules was clear, I have no problem discussing it with the miscreant, and explaining it to them. I can't imagine just dishing them out anonymously.

Well it depends what kind of forum you run... In this case people take infractions personally and if they know who it came from they go and complain to the other mods and it just creates Drama. Our old site had AWS installed and allowed for anonymity and it worked great.. so we rather not change what was already there.

For now we will be logging out and into our "moderator" account. Looks like i will just have to code this myself.

Oh yes, they always take it personally. But since our moderators have already discussed it, and voted on it, even if they run to another mod it does them no good. The second mod may tell them they voted not to infract, but has to admit a majority felt an infraction was warranted.

I really don't see how your system solves this, since they'll just mass PM all the mods with the drama, knowing that only one of them issued it.

No they don't because they don't know who it came from and if they reply to the PM it won't go anywhere..

Okay, that's too funny. Your entire staff is completely anonymous??? Even in the "View Site Leaders" section it's just completely blank? New moderators don't take on any new labels? Nobody posts site updates?

No no.. they can still go out of their way to contact a mod directly after the fact.. but most just don't worry about it. But when the PM comes with the infraction to begin with it just makes it to easy for them to reply and complain...

I managed to fix it all for anyone who is wondering....

Look for line:
Change to:
where xxx is the USER ID you wish the infraction to come from, in my case it's a user called "The Automatic Moderator" this line shows up in the users profile where it states the date it was issued and who it was from.

Look for line:
Change to:
where xxx is the userID you want the PM to come from, this will most likely be the same ID as above and this displays the avatar and info in the PM message to the user

[B]Look for line:
Change to:
where The Automatic Moderator is what you want the user to see who the PM came from in the Inbox list. You can type in whatever you want but most likely the Name of the ID you use.

Hope this helps some others!

Thanks for the help. Was curious about this myself a while back. One small problem. I receive a database error when trying to give an infraction after doing so:

Database error in vBulletin 4.0.8:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT IF(thread.visible = 2, 1, 0) AS isdeleted,


threadread.readtime AS threadread, forumread.readtime AS forumread,
post.pagetext AS description,
thread.*


FROM thread AS thread




LEFT JOIN threadread AS threadread ON (threadread.threadid = thread.threadid AND threadread.userid = User Name)
LEFT JOIN forumread AS forumread ON (forumread.forumid = thread.forumid AND forumread.userid = User Name)

LEFT JOIN post AS post ON(post.postid = thread.firstpostid)


WHERE thread.threadid = 13035;

MySQL Error : 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 'Bot)
LEFT JOIN forumread AS forumread ON (forumread.forumid = thread.forumid' at line 14
Error Number : 1064
Request Date : Friday, December 17th 2010 @ 02:46:40 PM

interesting.. not sure?! I am running 4.1.0 on mySQL 5.0 no errors?!

Sorry to resurrect and old thread. Is there a plugin that will allow you to specify the originator of an infraction? Is everyone successfully using this mod?

When you say "Originator" you are referring to the person who gave the infraction? That is something that I don't think you would accomplish with this. Its something a developer might need to tackle.