Advanced Warning System (AWS)

Advanced Warning System Version 3.5.0

The AWS version for vB 3.5 has been released. You can download it and get support in this thread:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=770032


Advanced Warning System Version 3.4.16 (latest stable release for vB 3.0.x)


LATEST ANNOUNCEMENT

The AWS has its own Premium Forum here at vBulletin.org, so please use that for questions and discussion on this hack.

The Permium Forum is located at :

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=105





This Warning System owes its existence to Zero Tolerance's Warning Hack (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65336). I liked the idea, so I installed Zero's hack in my forums site. However, as in most cases, I was not fully satisfied with the way it worked, so I started customizing it. Other people in the thread above, asked questions, which I had already answered by my customizing work, so I answered, giving away those parts of the code, that I had modified.

In the long run, I almost hijacked the thread and the hack from Zero, so I guess I owe him an apology. However, the mods I did have compiled a new, more complete warning system, with much more functionality. Several members from that thread, asked if this could be released as a new hack, so after discussing it with Zero, here it is.

What it does? Well, it is a Warning System, which means it allows you (the administrative team of your site, in other words the admins, the supermods and the mods), to define offences, which the members of your forum should NOT commit. But as we all know, there are instances where members do not follow the rules. In that case, this warning system, allows you to issue a warning to the member who commited the offence. The warning has some points associated with it, as well as a period over which it is valid. When a member gathers enough points, he is banned from your forums, for a predefined period of time. That's mostly it, but below, you can find a short list of features:

Full warning system with:

- post- and non-post-related warnings
- hierarchical warning schema
- hidden or real warners
- customizable maximum warning points
- automatically bans members who reached the maximum warning points
- customizable ban days
- customizable ban user group and permanent ban user group
- customizable restore user group, where users are restored after they get unbanned
- customizable option for who can see the warning level of the members
- automatically issued warnings for posts which contain censored words
- automatically issued warnings for private messages which contain censored words
- supports incremental banning periods
- supports multiple warnings for the same post
- warned members are notified either by Private Message or e-mail when they are warned and when one of the warnings they have received is either deleted or expired
- maintains historical listings of issued warnings (even if deleted or expired)
- customizable warning types
- each warning type has predefined warning points associated with it
- each warning type has predefined maturity period, after which it is automatically deleted
- reports for admin, mods and members
- cron job included to automatically remove matured warnings
- uses vBulletin's cron job, to automatically unban banned users
- all options are setable in your AdminCP
- user warning points and number of bans viewable in your AdminCP User Manager.
- statistics show warning per type, warnings per warner, bans per user.
- Allows you to warn a user from your AdminCP/User Manager.
- Large "Warn" sign, in posts which have received a warning, for mods, supermods and admins, to easily distinguish those posts.
- Ability to remove user's avatar, signature or usage of the Private Messaging system, depending on the warning points he has collected.
- Supports non-standard admins, supermods and mods user groups.
- Allows you to save a copy of the warning send to the warned user, in a predefined forum.
- Allows you to issue "Alerts" (warnings without warning points, for first-time offenders)
- Allows you to add private or public notes for a user, either post-specific or not. Notes appear in the postbit, above each user's message.
- etc.

Admitedly, this is not an easy hack to install. It requires 20 new templates and modifications to some existing ones too. It requires five new tables and modifications to some others. It requires several new phrases. I've tried to make the installation, as easy as I could, by automating certain tasks in an automatic installer. The installer will add the new templates for you, add the new tables required and change the existing ones, and will add the required new phrases. You will have to manually edit the existing templates and the php files though. I also included an upgrade script, which will upgrade those who are using Zero Tolerance's warning hack (version 1.5) to this one. An uninstaller is also included, which removes what the installer installs.

Please keep in mind, that this is a very difficult hack to install. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you back up your database before starting the installation. I also suggest that you keep copies of each file and template you edit, so that you can always revert to a previous stable condition. Finally, I strongly suggest that you always run the latest release.

The zip file always contains both the instructions and the files required to install the latest version. If you have installed a previous version and want to upgrade to the latest, there is a text file attached, in the zip with upgrade instructions. Follow them.

In this thread, you will also find a more detailed document describing the features of this hack, as well as a document describing its version evolution.

Also keep in mind that the installer, will add the AWS templates only to your default style. If you want to use them in another one, you may try this Zero Tolerance's hack, which copies the templates to other styles you may have.

Another thing, the installation instructions were written when vB was at release 3.0.3, so you may expect to find some differences, with the latest files and templates. As far as I can tell, I haven't faced any such case, but I post this reservation here, since I do not have the time to recheck all the instructions for compliance with the latest vB release. The hack has been installed and is working fine with the vBulletin version shown at the top of this thread.

Finally, if you are using more than one style, the installer will install the templates only in the default one. If you want to use the rest of your styles, here is a hack, that will do this for you.

This hack can also be integrated with Zero Tolerance's vBChat. However, since I am using a heavily-modified version of vBChat, I haven't included instructions, on how to patch the original vBChat files, in the documentation. If you are interested in having AWS issue automatic warnings when one of your user enters a censored word in a vBChat message, or if you want your moderators to be able to warn a user, who misbehaves in vBChat, please post a thread in this forum and I'll help you through.

This is my first officially released hack, so please don't be to harsh with me, if I broke any rules or made any mistakes. The mods have been tested extensively, both by me and two volunteers (thank you gentlemen), but I am only human.

Closing, let me thank Zero Tolerance, who got me started in this, and who owns a big part of the code of this hack. I definnitely couldn't have done it, without his code.

Special Note
For those who upgrade from Zero Tolerance's hack to my AWS, even though I have included a script which will do some of the work automatically, not everything is done by that script. Read the installation instructions carefully. You have to run the upgrade script first and then do several things manually. If you just run the upgrade script and just upload the files, the AWS will not work properly. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to post here.

Also, let me add here, that version 3.3.0 wouldn't have been possible without the contribution of Revan.

And a couple of warnings:

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ZIP FILE FROM HERE, BEFORE YOU START INSTALLING THIS HACK. JUST BECAUSE YOU DOWNLOADED IT A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO, THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS THE LATEST VERSION. MAKE SURE YOU DOWNLOAD THE ZIP, JUST BEFORE YOU START INSTALLING THIS HACK.


LATEST VERSION

Version 3.4.16 (released Thursday August 25th, 2005 GMT 18:18)

A couple of bugs fixed in this version. One is related to the Notes feature, and it allowed plain users to see the notes entered, if the "Who can view warning points" setting was set to "All".

Features.txt a new version of this file has been uploaded on April 4th2 005 GMT 09:30, which covers the latest additions to the hack. The original Features.txt file hasn't been updated since the first release of this hack, so it was time for an update.

John

[Revan]

Originally Posted by jluerken

Thanks,

this is looking much better now except one small thing.
If the user has no profile pic and the reputation system is activated, the reputation icon is placed in the middle of the member info.
In the original template its showing on top right which is looking better.

I want to have it over the UserID Text. Take a look at the attachment and you'll know what I mean.

Can you help me with this?

I modded my template so this icon is next to the username instead.
All you have to do is place the variable controlling it (cant remember what it is) to somewhere else.

[jluerken]

I modified it like this which is much better now I think:

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Delphiprogrammi

my memberinfotemplate doesn't have

<if condition="$show['avatar']">
				<td colspan="3">

what do i do about that ??

also there is no link in my navbar ... i added that two lines to the navbar template but nope ....

What you should be looking for is:

PHP Code:

<if condition="$show['avatar']">
                <td> 


and replace it with :

PHP Code:

<if condition="$show['avatar']">
                <td colspan="3"> 


Please read the instructions carefully.

As for the navbar, if you added those two lines, it should be there, there is no reason why it is not showing. Show me the code you have there.

Rgds

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Bolas

Hi,

your hack is great, congratulations.
I find myself in a situation where interactions between many moderators (people I trust) may sometimes be difficult to manage: coalitions to ban a user from the whole board may be unpleasant moments in the community. At the moment your hack cannot be used for every single forum. If it could, we may havea system by which ban from every single forum may be proposed by the regular users of that particular forum.
Would it be a long and difficult job to add such a feature into next release?
Again congratulation.

It's not very difficult to do what you want, AWS is not very far from what you are asking, the main differences are:

- everybody can vote against everybody. This can be considered the same as everybody being capable of issuing warnings.
- in which case, obviously the warning points required for a ban should be much higher.

So, in reality, with some changes at who can vote (warn), some adjustements of the existing parameters and some additional parameters (like for example how many times a member can warn another member), a system like the one you describe is possible.

Or, you can add another level above the whole hack, where users are really voting for a particular warning which the admins have decided to issue against a particular member, and the results of these votes decide if the warning is issued or not. This is getting too "democratic" for my taste, and too much democracy easily leads to anarchy.

I am not sure if the above make sense, too late in the evening and too many things in my mind, so sorry if they sound like a drunk man's words (I swear, no drinks).

Rgds

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by oldfan

looks great, is it bug free yet?

I do not know, you should ask the members who installed it.

Rgds

[Delphiprogrammi]

allright installed fine no more php errors but i can't figure out howto give a warning ? i added a user called "forumgod" gave him super moderator rights (like the instructions say) but howdo i give a warning ? i also added a normal user called test to play with but .... howdo i give him a warning when i am logged as an administrator Warn.php?do=Warn&userid=$bbuserinfo[userid] ??

my vbulletion version is the latest availible from vbulletin.com/members/

ooh the nevbar thingy is working now :speechless:

[edit]

never mind there is a link called "warn vbulletin_username" at the top right corner of the post they make i just wasn't logged in a username able to warn so i couldn't see that sorry .... :ermm:

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Delphiprogrammi

allright installed fine no more php errors but i can't figure out howto give a warning ? i added a user called "forumgod" gave him super moderator rights (like the instructions say) but howdo i give a warning ? i also added a normal user called test to play with but .... howdo i give him a warning when i am logged as an administrator Warn.php?do=Warn&userid=$bbuserinfo[userid] ??

my vbulletion version is the latest availible from vbulletin.com/members/

ooh the nevbar thingy is working now :speechless:

[edit]

never mind there is a link called "warn vbulletin_username" at the top right corner of the post they make i just wasn't logged in a username able to warn so i couldn't see that sorry .... :ermm:

If you are logged in as an admin or supermod or mod, and you look into a thread which contains user posts, in each user post, you should see two links. One saying "Warn XYZ" and one saying "View XYZ's warnings", where XYZ is the user name. Their purpose is obvious.

Depending on whether or not you allow off-post warnings or not, similar links appear, if you click on the poster's name inside a post and go to his public profile.

Rgds

[sv1cec]

Folks,

For those who upgraded to version 2.3, I haven't included instructions, on how to set the version of the hack, in the database.

Please run the following query:

UPDATE `".TABLE_PREFIX."warning_options` SET version='2.3' WHERE oid=1

Rgds

[Delphiprogrammi]

i got this thing working great thing spammers will think twice now i managed to get the script working using this steps

• back your database in case you screw up you can easly restore the backup
• for security reasons make a copy off all *.php files that need to be edited manually(this allows you to uninstall easysly when you need to)
• open installationinstructions.txt included in the zip and follow the instructions provided

like this there won't be a problem

last thing a screenshot from the working script

thanks for the great excellent

[sv1cec]

Originally Posted by Delphiprogrammi

i got this thing working great thing spammers will think twice now i managed to get the script working using this steps

• back your database in case you screw up you can easly restore the backup
• for security reasons make a copy off all *.php files that need to be edited manually(this allows you to uninstall easysly when you need to)
• open installationinstructions.txt included in the zip and follow the instructions provided

like this there won't be a problem

last thing a screenshot from the working script

thanks for the great excellent

That's the kind of feedback I want from you guys, thanks a lot Delphi!

Rgds