A 3 type Infraction Moderation System: White cards for smooth user activity tracking

[socialvisionsbcn]

I'm admin on a sex and prostitution services oriented forum in Spain.
At present time we count 24.000 registered users, 10.000 average visits in labour days and 30-40 new users every day.

We deal with intense activity on moderation since first start up. The moderation team is formed by 6 persons currently and we have a wide range of predefined sanctions of which we assign 10-15 per day among users. Not only infractions; corrections on format and relocation of posts accumulates quite a while in moderation and supervision tasks.

The main problem for us is supervision of covered promotion of girls and agencies. Though they have free participation and promotion on the site, the temptation to appear as a satisfied customer on the forum is still strong. We have to thank the "Multiple Account Detection & Prevention" hack for the enormous work that does in our web (thanks Kiros72 !!) but even that way we've got to keep an eye on many facts to detect fraud or hidden promotion.

The usual way to contribute in our forum is a "service experience" text layout in wich users fill their sexual encounters with professionals. The amount of text of narrative and others contributions of many users is such that is hard to get a rapid quick review of a writer's intentions by just reading across his recent posts.

Among many other technical efforts for improving moderation efficiency, we are trying to involve users in the use of the "reported post" function. A bit of original mod of ours is that we reoriented the yellow card of infraction-warning to give positive feedback to those who collaborate reporting. We have turned this card into green colour and a predefined infraction title thanks the user whose report gets to moderation action.

So, we have the red cards also painted as yellow to soften the rejection image to a more "suggestion" kind of message but the efficiency of automating messaging through the use of the infraction system instead of the Private Messaging is high. You get log on the user profile of the communications and we share with no extra effort the info among the moderation staff.

I forgot, we have configured a public Subforum with no reply capabilities were the creation of the automated sanction-thread takes place. So at least we can show users the tremendous activity that lies behind the site.

Our proposal is simple. We need to associate small pieces of info, suspicions and details observed on the users contributions to facilitate quick review of user activity (orientation, topics treated, interests) in the forum. We want this info to be placed somewhere accessible, sharable with moderation stuff and easy to launch from the post itself.

We strongly think that a 3rd type of card (a white card???) in the infraction-moderation system would be great. It would be analogous to a standard infraction in all ways except the user wouldn't appreciate any activity. No MP to user and no auto thread creation to get it away from our public infractions forum.

This solution would provide quick review info on the infraction subfolder of the user profile, accordingly mixed up with negative and positive (in our case) infractions history.

Currently a user infractions profile looks like this in our forum, mixing positive (green) and negative (yellow) cards.

We'd first like opinions on the idea and others points of view, but we are predisposed to offer the project as a paid work if the implementation is not very out of range of the vBullentin possibilities (I guess it is not!).

Thanks for your comments and attention.

[socialvisionsbcn]

Sorry if this Bump goes against policy. Once this thread had passed first page again we’ll try on to the paid-work section.

I forgot to explain that in our site, the notification-cards attached to the posts are also made public to all users.
This, in conjunction with the open appearance of both notifications and the gratitude cards (repainted green especially for this purpose) is working great involving users to participate with the “reported post” function.

We aim to get a tool to synthesize users’ contributions for quick stuff review, and we think a notification system adaptation could be the way.

[Alfa1]

The white card approach is similar to the user note on profile, except that the user note function is useless.

I understand that what your want is to do several things:

1. alert staff of the issue with user
2. have the same notification visible for staff on the users profile
3. the user should not be aware of the notification.

I think your white card idea is brilliant. Though to properly notify staff, I think such white card notices should be posted to a staff thread. And IMHO optimally there should be 2 threads: one for worrisome members and one for rising members. The notices for worrisome members could be done with black cards and the notice about rising/positive member could be done with a white card.

I would very much like to have functionality like the above, because it would make my staffs life a lot easier.

[socialvisionsbcn]

Thank you for your comments, Alfa1

In fact we already tried to use the user note function that way, but with little success.
Making user notes only accessible and readable to staff have some functionality in the sense that we want but with notorious handicaps.

First reason is that the content of user notes is not easily showed in the user post-bit, so access to the user profile is needed to check stored info every time. Neither the info is attached to the original post in any way, requiring quoting or extra manoeuvre to maintain the link of stuff entries with the source post of the user. So it becomes hard to coordinate supervision on which posts have already generated notes and which not.

Other reason is that when an incidence occurs with a user, user notes is an extra space of info we have to look at (apart from notifications subfolder) so consuming time. A combined space for all user info would be naturally preferred. In addition, when adding a user note from a post through a link in his profile, you have to navigate back to the original post to keep on reading the forum or handle extra windows to deal with the job. The notification procedure gets you back to the post/thread automatically.

In conclusion, the absence of connection between the original post ant the entry in the user's note is a problem and the lack of info in the post-bit lessens interaction in the process.

In relation to the “black cards” that you comment I have to apologise for not detailing enough. We do that function just by generating “reported posts” to ourselves and it works already great. The auto thread is created in the right place (stuff only) and request for opinions is generated rapidly.

The white card purpose is only to store special info clues to track a user trajectory . It would not generate stuff issue, neither comunication to the user.

The approach you propose to distinguish positive and negative remarks, involving auto thread creation is not exactly my original idea, in the sense that every staff entry on user’s activity generating a thread could be too much information to review in our forum. If that was the case, I think a separated forum for maintaining user’s reports apart could be convenient.

In our forum, reported posts are handled kind of the "ticket support systems" (and can be launched by ourselves), whereas the proposed “white cards” need no immediate attention.

[Alfa1]

Ah. I see. We have the following in the staff zone on our site:

1. reported posts: are posted in the reported posts forum and need to be handled like support tickets and need moderator action.
2. infractions and warnings forum: we rarely keep an eye on this forum, because there are too many every day to keep up with. The only use for this forum is that new threads appear in the 'new posts' function.
3. a black card thread: this is only to bring negative issues to the attention of the staff, without the need of any moderator action.
4. a white card thread: this is only to bring positive issues to the attention of the staff, without the need of any moderator action.

Because the card threads, are only 2 threads, its very easy for the staff to keep track on, as opposed to keeping track of 300 post reports a week. These cards threads serve for the staff to keep track of things and discuss members.

BTW: you might find this thread interesting:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ins-to-give-up

[socialvisionsbcn]

Thanks again for replying, alfa1!

The thread linked explains very clearly much part of our problems. Except the email bouncing part (because we do not send any email to user, just by that) it’s comforting to see other’s problems are so similar to ours and we converge in so many ways.

I also had written myself a “perfect moderation toolkit features list” to take frustration out. It is written in Spanish only by the moment and there is much coincidence with your explanation.

Black & White cards.
The proposal of white & black cards described your way would perfectly fit in our forum. I was initially thinking (mistaked) of them landing in a entire forum, but occupying just a thread in staff section each is even better, leaving that way a thematic log. I find it perfect!

Handling the “user report ticket system”
I also thought of using prefixes to show state of process, but given the inline editing capability of threads, we have preferred to use little pieces of text in the title for labelling. We detail the state of the report (done/MP sent), and who is handling the issue (abbreviation of staff member). So far is the parse we apply.

Mp & Email & Contact Form Bridge
I spent time thinking on how to unify all the staff messaging in a centralized place. The most urgent part for our forum would be an option for “thread copy/logging” for the staff MPs. It duplicates time to get your staff informed on an issue handled by MP if you have to post your messages, and a Hidden Carbon Copy isn’t definitely a solution in a medium size site. A way to get emails into the staff forum (bridged to a thread??) in some automated way would also speed up many tasks in our case.

FAQ subdomains.
It is kind of simple but we did realize not so long ago. Using subdomains (pointing to the proper explanation post, Ex: http://reporting.yourweb.com) is very handy for answering common questions and doubts. We have more than 30 configured currently.

[socialvisionsbcn]

I have added a splitted item overview of our site methodology here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...=1#post2025413

I'd appreciate comments !!

[socialvisionsbcn]

I've been thinking arround the topic and another approach comes to my mind.

The coding implications of modifying the notification system of vBulletin maybe high.
Cards appear in posts, user profile and MPs and auto-thread get involved. The starting limitation of one card per post may not be addecuate to handle extra card types in the same system also.

Instead of that, a less ambicious approach could be just to extend functionality in the post reporting function.

In the case of my site, an extra check box (only available to mods, sure, or even through back-door text prefix or similar) to generate a User Note in the same action of the report, could be of great benefit. Quote of post reported could appear in the note the same as the auto-thread content.

Another check box for generating an extra MP in the accion of reporting could be functional for us as well. Stuff would be notified by the auto thread while the user would not perceive the comunication as a notification event.

[socialvisionsbcn]

I have recently added this to the threads creatd by reports:

$vbphrase[reportpost_newthread]

PHP Code:

Link al mensaje: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?p=$reportinfo[postid]#post$reportinfo[postid]]$reportinfo[prefix_plain]$reportinfo[threadtitle][/url]
MP al Creador del Post: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/private.php?do=newpm&u=$reportinfo[puserid]]Enviar MP a $reportinfo[pusername][/url]
Editar el mensaje: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=$reportinfo[postid]]Editar el mensaje[/url]
Sancionar el mensaje: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/infraction.php?do=report&p=$reportinfo[postid]]Sancionar el mensaje[/url]
Crear Nota de Usuario: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/usernote.php?do=newnote&u=$reportinfo[puserid]]Nota en perfil de $reportinfo[pusername][/url]
Feedback al Autor del Aviso: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/infraction.php?do=report&u=$reportinfo[ruserid]]Feedback para $reportinfo[rusername][/url] 


And also changed the message quote to an INDENT so that the ALT text displays beginnging of post reported from subforum index.

It is not a perfect solution but it speedups moderation actions.

There are no more than links to user note creation, message editor, MP form and Infractions menu on the specific reported post.

I also changed Thread title to show author of reported content and text reported.

[Alfa1]

Feedback al Autor del Aviso: [url=$vboptions[bburl]/infraction.php?do=report&u=$reportinfo[ruserid]]Feedback para $reportinfo[rusername][/url]

Do you have a hack installed that allows you to give feedback to the reporter?