OffTopic: Forum wins injunction against user

My apologies for the off-topic post. Scream, please delete it if you consider it inappropriate.

I thought that, since a number of us must deal with disruptive individuals in our forums, you might find this story interesting. It deals with a discussion forum winning a permanent injunction against one of its disruptive users.

Here are some relevant URLs (warning: some of the threads are quite long, 635k for the last one):

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/10/1311204.shtml
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad1f5631194.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a70c1b007e0.htm

Derek

This brings up a question. WIth the new "Notify Moderator" feature, does the moderator get a notification every time someone clicks the icon (which would allow a trouble maker to cause the moderator to get flooded) or only one notification regardless of how many times peole click the button for a particular post?

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

Maybe it would be a good thing if the moderator was "flooded". It would get his attention. If not that, then at least a "count" of how many members were po'd at the post/poster. Otherwise, who's to know whether it's just one individual with a grudge?

http://www.yourvacationdreams.com

The moderator is notify whenever someone clicks on it. This feature is only available to users that are logged in, so as with any other trouble maker, it will be possible to track down the user and take the necessary actions against them.

Perhaps it could go into a log file so there's no risk of mailbox flooding?

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

Derek, that is a great read. Thanks for posting it.

Scream, thank you very much for adding the "Notify Moderator" option. I really truly believe this will become an extremely useful tool in two ways.

First, it provides an easy manner for our visitors to reports problems quickly and easily, and secondly it will act as a deterrent. Some may not agree, but I see this icon and it's function to be similar to the "Neighborhood Watch" signs you see in many neighborhoods. ;)

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Scream, I think you missed my point by a bit. My point wasn't that the trouble maker is repeatedly clicking the "Notify Moderator" button (although that could be a problem too). My point was that a trouble maker could create an account (using some free email account that hasn't been banned yet) and intentionally post an obscene message. Then 100 people see the message (say while the moderator is sleeping) and they all click the Notify Moderator button, so the moderator gets flooded with email. The trouble maker keeps creating more new accounts and posting obscenities and the moderator gets flooded (like in the situation described by Derek's post).

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

I think Eileens' log file idea is a great solution. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]

http://www.yourvacationdreams.com

Yes it is a good idea... but how about a count per user (and not notifying the moderator if that user has already used that feature for that post) or like with the polls, only allowing one turn?

Gerrit
SpiritBoard
http://www.channeling.net

Ok, how many times does a moderator actually need to be notified of a post? I would think if they get one email then they would probably check it out. So, maybe I can just start another table that holds the post number and once anyone notifies the moderator noone else can. So even if 100 users click that button the mod will still only get 1 email.

Makes sense to me! :-) []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Gerrit
SpiritBoard
http://www.channeling.net

For each post right?

I mean if the same moron posted some filth to ten threads then each post would have to have the ability to notify the moderator. Even if it is the same person using the notify link.

I think It's something that could get quite complicated, coding wise. Because to do it right it would seem that the new table would have to be able to tell which person has used the link and which particular forum post. Then deny the use of the link if they had already used it for that post. I mean if you didn't do things that way then the visitor wouldn't be able to 'narc' on each post that they may need to....it would have to be post specific, right?

Brew
CustomShowCars.com
OldHouseForums.net
PoliticalForums.net

Yes, per post. Once anyone has notified the moderator for a specific post then the moderator wouldn't get notified again for that individual post.

Awesome!

So the second user of the link, or any user after the first, would get a screen saying that the moderator (and Admin) has already been notified and help is on the way?

And the same user can use the link in other posts that the moron has defaced?

Brew
CustomShowCars.com
OldHouseForums.net
PoliticalForums.net

This sounds better, but I would take it one step further. In the extra table you might want to record how many people have attempted to notify the moderator about the post. That way, if you get one person that does a "notify moderator" for every single post in the forum it doesn't completely obscure the fact that there were legitimate complaints from other (more sane) people.

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

That makes sense. I'll buy that solution.

[]http://www.wopr.com/w3tuserpics/Eileen-sig.gif[/]

That makes a lot of sense, but do you really need a new table? the w3t_moderators table couldn't serve your purpose? It's a matter of performance and of number of open tables. An additional advantage using it you can store the informations for each board separately.

The w3t_Moderators table only has one entry per user and forum. This requires multiple entries and doesn't need to have anything as far as the forum is concerned. It's just a table with post numbers that a moderator has been notified of. Performance wise, the only time this table gets hit is when someone actually clicks on the notify moderator icon, so it's minimal.

I've got this change made already and seems to work well.

In reply to:
I've got this change made already and seems to work well.

uuummmm....I don't think so.....

I've been going around trying to find a post that I can use in order to notify the moderator but I get this instead....

"Thank you for your attempt to notify the moderator(s) of this post, however they have already been notified of this post and will be checking it shortly"

Brew
CustomShowCars.com
OldHouseForums.net
PoliticalForums.net

ummmm.... well maybe I just don't want your notification[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. Ok, so apparently it isn't working so good. I'll get it patched up in the morning.[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

That is an excellent way to handle it... :)

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Just an idea... how about an extra column in the post table to list the users who have complained about the post? That way one could even replace the notify moderator icon with one that shows that this feature has already been used, that the moderator has been notified, and disable the link (i.e. use that column for showflat/showthreaded display) - of course if this wouldn't decrease efficiency significantly.

Gerrit
SpiritBoard
http://www.channeling.net

I like that idea Gerrit! Perhaps an icon that indicates, "This post has been reported!" hehe... That would be just the ticket.

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

People might start reporting posts as a way to slander the author. For example, "I really hate insert name so I'm going to report his posts so that he'll be embarassed by having the 'This post has been reported!' stuck to it."

And, what happens when a moderator looks at the post and decides there is nothing wrong with it? Does the icon become "This post has been approved!"? If it does, the moderator could (maybe--I'm not a lawyer) find themselves held liable for the contents. The "terms of use" for many forums disclaim reponsibility for the content saying things like "You acknowledge that Yahoo does not pre-screen Content..." - you could have trouble if users are able to determine which posts were approved by a moderator. Of course, maybe I am just paranoid...

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

Actually, I don't want it to be publicly shown as reported just for that reason, but rather that the user who reported it would see it as such, so he won't keep trying to report it (and that should be also not possible). That's why I suggested an extra table column to list the users who reported the post, so that in showflat/showthreaded the script would show a different icon depending on if the user reported that post or not.

Gerrit
SpiritBoard
http://www.channeling.net

Ah, I see. Do you think it's really necessary to worry about the same user reporting the same post more than once? After all, when they see the post a second time the post icon is yellow instead of orange, so they really should know that they've been there before.

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.

In order to do it this way we'd need to make this new field an index. The posts table already has 9 different indexes. Indexes are great for selects but too many of them and any inserts or updates start to really slow down. This would mainly affect the addpost.pl script which already has to work very hard with all the queries and updates it does. For this reason I think it would be best to keep it in a different table so it only gets hit when clicking on the notify moderator icon.

No... ONLY the user who already clicked on the option would see that. Others would not. If they too clicked on the same post/thread then obviously something was bad enough for more than one person to report it. Then the person could receive a notice, thanks this problem has been reported. It does not have to indicate by whom or anything.

So, yes, I agree... the fact that it’s been used already should only be seen by the person who actually submitted it. Other visitors would see the same old icon.

Jhariden (aka Strategist)
Stratics Forums

Now for some real admin power... How about that email the moderator/admin gets contains some html with easy-to-click links to:

- The offending post.
- Ban/blacklist the poster
- Remove/closing the thread
- Blacklisting the email domain from which he registered

This all requires that the admin/moderator is logged in and he/she reads this email (and of course that he/she uses an email client that support htmlized email), but if not it shouldn't be too hard to take a detour via the login screen on the way to those admin functions... []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Yours,

[:red]Per Gøtterup
System Administrator, NetGroup A/S