User Punishment by BOP5
 

User Punishment by BOP5

"This is cruelest mod ever released since Miserable Users..."

This is the VB 4.x version.
VB 3.x version here.

Version 1.2

For too long we as admins have been limited on how we can take revenge on the users who drive us crazy. You know the ones- they don't break the rules per say but they certainly break the spirit of the rules.We don't want to ban them, Infractions don't really mean anything, So what could we do? We were stuck... until now.

User Punishment by BirdOPrey5 is Here!

This mod adds teeth to infraction points or can be used against specific users. Basically this mod will slow down a user's browsing experience by 1 or more seconds per request. A couple seconds here or there doesn't sound like a lot but think about it, if they make 30 clicks on your site per visit with a 2 second delay you've stolen a minute of their life. A minute they can never, ever get back.Like the torture machine from the movie "The Princess Bride" you have robbed from them the one thing no mortal man can ever recover. And like that torture machine you can turn it up as high as you like. [Insert evil grin smiley here.]

This mod has two ways of working. If you use the built in infractions system in vBulletin you can enable the mod to slow down a user's page load request based on the number of infraction points they have. By default 1 second for each point however you can multiply this with a setting- slow them down by 2, 3, or even 4 or more seconds per infraction point.

Now infractions actually mean something. As points expire their browsing speed will automatically return to normal.

The second option allows you to target specific users. In this mode you enter three pieces of data: The User ID, the Minimum Delay in Seconds, and the Maximum Delay in Seconds. The mod will then RANDOMLY slow down every request from the user for a time between the two numbers, inclusive. This mode is best used silently. Targeted users will simply think your forum or their Internet connection is being slow. They probably won't even say anything- but YOU will know. You will know every time they post or browse you are sucking their life away second by second.

Please Mark as Installed if you use this. :)
If you enjoy it please consider nominating it MOTM.

Reserved.

this is one of the best Ideas I have encounter. Will install to test. :D

Sounds good.

How about putting random 500 server errors or random logouts into the cycle as well?

Kewl.. or crewl LOL

It's something I may consider but have you tried the Miserable User's mod by Paul M? That has server timeouts and re-directs.

My goal here was only to slow people down, not "break" things on them.

This is actually really good. Thanks!

Can you add random high octane soundbits and other shocksounds? :D

LOL thanks man, installed

tagged and thanks

You can (just) slow them down in MU if you want, its all optional.

I do like the infraction points idea. :)

Feel free to add infraction points options to MU.

The main reason I made this was so I could assign custom delays to specific users.

Excellent idea. :up:

Would it be possible to divide infraction points? At the moment I have set them relatively high (first is 10 points, second 35...). If I could divide them by 10 and round it up it would be something. To use them as it is now for me this would make it too cruel.

So I would need divider to "normalize" infraction points, than to decide how many seconds every "normalized" infraction point lasts. Or change my whole infraction system, which also is a bit of a problem (not that I couldn't do this).

Yeah, I will work on something to accommodate higher infraction points.

Nice idea.
Wouldn't, say, 0.5 as multiplier work? I mean, wouldn't that cut the time to half a second?

Yes... it means I have to use the millisecond sleep function instead of the full second sleep function.

For VB4 it doesn't really matter, but for the VB3 version of this mod (which it was originally created for) the millisecond sleep function isn't supported on windows based systems before php 5.0 so for some people it may not have worked. But since VB4 requires php 5.2 this shouldn't be an issue in this version.

Hi,

VB 4.0.6

Installed ok... but I can't turn it on. As soon as I save it, it shows as OFF.
I reinstalled and overwrite and it's the same.

Anyone help please?

thanks

Do you have any working mods installed?

Yes... quite a few.

And if you could also add some offset. For example, lets say user have 50 points, and I don't want to punish him. I divide this with 10 (or use 0.1) so it gives 5 seconds. But with offset I could subtract 5 and this user has no slowdown.

Formula would be:

Infraction points * Time multiplayer - Offset = Actual slowdown.

I would uninstall the mod completely and then re-install. There is nothing in the mod that could be causing something like this- it uses the same code to make settings as any other vBulletin mod.

Yip, that worked :)

Great addon BTW :)

thanks for sharing it

You're welcome- glad it's working. Had never seen that issue before. :up:

VERY cool mod!

May be I'm taking a long distant shot with this but how about adding some vBExperience decreasing points ?

I'm not really familiar with VBExperience... If they have an existing system for reducing infraction points then that would still work with this mod. But if you mean to create a way of reducing infraction points in exchange for credits that would be something that would have to be done on VBExperience's side of things.

I kind of like this idea, but a mod I would like to see is where a member would slowly lose reputation points and rights to certain areas based on number of infractions they have. I prefer not to outright ban people if I don't have to, but something that slowly degrades their rights and priviledges, along with reputation points would be a big help to handling the trolls we all have.

You need to setup usergroups with less and less privileges, and change them with infraction points. It's within vBulletin already, check https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/user_infractions, especially this part: https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/..._modify_groups

Good idea Alan. dmm2020, losing privileges based on infraction points would be outside the scope of this mod.

I tested this out and it does not seem to work at all in my setup. I can give the link via PM if you want, but while I like the idea of this, the tests my moderators did does not show any noticeable showdown no matter how much the delay is set to.

Please PM a link with a username/login of a user on punishment.

Are you using the infractions or directly targeting users? if direct please also post or PM me a copy of all the text in the settings box.

The issue with dmm2020 is that his 4.1.4 forum was not actually giving infraction points to the users. It was as if they were all warnings only regardless of whether he checked warning or not. He is submitting a bug report with vBulletin but this is not a problem with this mod. If anyone else gets this running on 4.1.4 it would be great if you could confirm you had it working (or not).

I have verified this does in fact work in vb 4.1.4 AND that the errors I was getting was configuration issues, not related to this mod. Good work and same recommendation I passed via PM. I recommend that delay either be in microseconds OR set up to allow decimal numbers. I would prefer the delay be suttle at first. Perhaps have the delay gradually fade away as the infraction ages without a repeat.

HI all,

I need to understand how to get the user ID. I have seen on a lot of forums that people say use the URL but the URL's on my forum simply displays the user name not the ID. I am also not a coder but would dearly love to use this mod.

I have candidates for this lined up.

Thanks in advance for helping me reap my evil revenge.

The easiest way is to "Search for Users" in your Admin CP, enter the username, and hit search.

On the very top of the left column it will say something like: User: Pam (id: 11)

Where "11" is the userid in this case.

This is the best mod ever. This mod allowed me to force some wannabe users to leave the forum without banning them. My forum has improved its quality amazingly.

I love this mod but I have a problem. The user with punishment can create another account an this account will work fine.
This is bad.

There are other mods that can detect "AE" (Alter-Ego) accounts. I suggest a policy of 1 account allowed per user.

Do you have a link for me?

This one works still works on VB 4.x: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=183268