[stardotstar]

Hi BirdOPrey5 and thanks for highlighting the exact issue I found!

With standard banning the issue never arises.

Full banning excludes the member from the forums and so I created groups with permissions to browse but not post. The yellow card is less restricitve than the red card group which completely excludes the member from particular areas like off-topic, classifieds etc.

When you make a group a banned group (Group is Not a Banned Group = No) it becomes a group you can select in the dropdown when banning:



See the "move to usergroup" --> this is usually just Banned.



What we have found is that becuase banning is so final and completely excludes the user and infractions are so proceedural (ie swearing = infraction) and usually water off a ducks back; we find that there is no good intermediate position.

Most of the time when we want to nip something in the bud we get a series of PMs from mods to tell a member to pull their head in or change some general pattern of behavior that is, for example, agains the "spirit" of the rules more than the letter and they often take exception and bring the fight to the centre stage. What can be a simple matter of a dispute between two members which brings a moderator into it ends up being front page headlines and an invitation for all the usual suspects to pile in and stir up some carnage.

The idea is that if a member gets hot under the collar about some moderator action or other issue and they need to be given a chance to cool down before they take their next dozen posts to a whole new level of escalation they can be treated as though they are arguing with a ref on the field - Whistle blows and --- you are out of here - half and hour on the bench in a game may translate to a 1 day or 7 day yellow card on the site. This means that they can continue to watch the game and are not completely excluded but they are unable to continue with a posting behavior of vexatious or antagonistic argument.

Some of the usual agitators may end up wearing some "cards" with pride and that is also ok becuase they know that they are gagged when they are carded and if they come back on worse than ever it will escalate to red and then a full ban. At each stage we can control the level and length better than just a complete ban which often provides less access than unlogged in.

I am trying to work out the best way to make the refereeing and moderating more like a game than the kind of "blown-out-of-all-proportions-do-or-die" escalation that so often happens and causes so much collateral damage along the way.

This way the mod team can say - this guy is out of line, has been warned and is persisting in activity that will see his posts pulled and new ones started straight away, bringing in backup and all sorts of additional fallout - so, take a seat on the bench and calm down.

Now... To the point of this thread. When testing the permissions - restrictions on the blog, which forums they can access, ability to post in visitor messgaes, or EDIT their original posts - or change their attachments etc we found that the permissions system is more than adequeue for the task - but one of my testers used the test account to report a series of posts from within the forum, and this ably demonstrated that it would be a way that a member who has been carded could still sit on the sidelines and yell at the umpires and refs :lol: - instead of having to ignore that or put up with it I disabled the post report function for members of that group.

There may in fact be better ways to implement this kind of disciplinary system and I had a bit of a look around at the various hacks and decided that some simple graphics, some permissions wrangling and a change or two in the phrasing of the ban system would at least be worth a try.



I hope it works better than the experience we have had in the past where such small issues can end up with major arguments and hate-fests - so unnecessary, so disruptive and disappointing for the greater majority of members who have no problem with the rules or how to conduct themselves.



I have made an effort to expand on my concept simply because I am working hard on making sure it is as good as I can make it without over complicating things.

I also hope that it helps people searching or googling this kind of situation.

Cheers,
Will