I got to talking with my client the other day - and she thought it'd be great if there were a way to "suspend" a profile. The idea would be, if a user posted innapropriate content on his or her profile, an admin could suspend that user's profile so that it wasn't visible to anyone else besides the admins and the user. That way the user wouldn't have to be kicked off the website (unless such action was warranted), but instead the admin could talk to that user and allow him or her to change the information on the profile before setting it back to a public view.

good idea +1

I like the idea, +1

Perhaps also suspending then deleting if there is no activity in six months or 1 year? Send an email warning first.

Will S

+1

+1

+1

This could be a mandatory item for us. In Australia it is a legal requirement for those operating social / community based websites to be able to moderate all aspects of user generated content.
We were planning to do this by deleting the Users account if there were issues. However if we had a suspension option that would be a less harsh method of cleaning up the users behaviour.

So let's talk about this a little. What other requirements would we need? Hide the account, prevent postings? Can they still log in? Should their account basically go "read only".

What about a time period....I've seen things like "7 Day Suspension" on other sites. This is visible to other members in post info, etc....which sort of lets other people know "hey you really can get in trouble" which can be a good thing.

This is a good discussion to have. Previously, before I got rid of them all (which in retrospect could've been avoided) I had some real PITA users who thought that since they donated 5 bucks to the site, that it gives them free reign to break the rules and be complete 4ssh0l3s to anyone they wanted. So I started deleting threads, removing posts, etc... and finally, banning those particular users. (one of which still honors me with impersonation and other bad mouthing! *shrug*)

So again, in retrospect, it would've been nice to do just what Steven was saying... put them on probation. This may or may not include(depending on the situation): Post Moderation (which I know already exists), Profile Edit Moderation, an email template for "You broke the rules, now you are on probation for 7 days, here is a link to the site rules and guidelines", etc. And then if the person really deserves to be banned from the site for awhile, revocation of login privileges, hiding of profile, etc.

This idea came up because we still wanted to be able to let the user log in to use site resources, but not really interact with the community. The site I'm putting up has a document library, a classifieds section etc that we didn't think the user necessarily needed to be removed from because there's no way to really abuse those. Suspending them from forum postings (or making their posts require approval) would be great.

As far as a time period, I suppose I didn't think that would be automatic - more of an admin decision. Our client wanted the ability to just have time to actually talk to the offender and then lift the suspension.

Today I PM the user, delete the offending thread etc. 9 times out of 10 it's just a spammer and I'll manually un-authorize their account. But...for the 1 in 10 who are actively participating in the community it would be nice to put a dunce cap on them. Social networks can leverage crowd wisdom in more than one way

I'm becoming more interested in stepped membership as my site grows. Just today..someone signed up, created a blog and posted a spam list of links. I handled it quickly...but was thinking...I really should find a way to tie features to participation or rank or karma, etc.

I know this is a little off the topic...but it's rewarding positive behavior (participation, answering questions, getting points from other users etc) and obviously the opposite for negative behavior...taking features away.

There almost needs to be a role status in the core.

I was under the impression that AF 4x provided a method of restricting new users to be under moderation until they achieve the requirements of the site. This method would also allow you to place a member on probation by removing points or raising the bar. Points and post activity was my plan for avoiding the idiots and spammers.

Duane - yes indeed. But in my case spammers hit the core blog sometimes the news articles comments, etc. Modules outside of AF's control.

I'd love to have some sort of functionality to easily deal with two types of time sucks:

- Flame war/ posting while drinking, etc: Probably a suspension-like model. Wouldn't need to be time based, although I could see that being of value. User could still log in, but not contribute any content or make any changes. This would be like a "time out" or cooling off period where an admin/manager could discuss with the user(s) how to best move forward. Most likely would be used by manager who just needs to get the discussions back on track.

- Weapon of Mass Destruction: Does not allow log in. Blocks IP. Removes all existing content contributed by user. *Gets a TRO from the local court. Reports violation to all authorities. Dispenses shock to user mouse and chair seat. Blasts non-stop Yo Mamma retorts to user's route.. Plays loops of infomercials on top of every browser screen. Auto subscribes user to every teen beat mailing list. Sends user's home address and cell number to every 409 scammer with a note saying "my bank account is lonely".

Okay, just joking on everything past the *. This would be used by managers for obvious spam/attacks/bots. Not rehabilitation attempted, no negotiation, no discussion. Just get this crap off my site and do it in batch mode. Be ruthless about it. Don't make me go hunt it down.

Just my 2cents.