Hi! I was wondering if maybe moderators could have a “calm down time” sort of feature to use.
Not banning or suspending users, and therefore not affecting them in the future. Just not letting them post like flag e,t,c for a couple hours to help mods defuse a situation in an orderly manner. Maybe even an automated PM reminding them to remain respectful and rather than replying to anything just contact a Mod…
Even better would be if a mod can stop a user from posting on a specific topic for an amount of time, without closing it for everyone (and it would automatically unlock after that time)
There could also be a trust level which Mods can put users on, which means they have to have any of their posts approved. This would be a good deterrent for continous trouble makers!
This sounds like “read-only” mode, where it fully mutes a user or users from doing anything, but they can still browse the forum. I know SMF has this feature and I have used it before to good effect.
Some of that functionality exists. You can require posts to be approved by any users below a certain trust level, and lock someone’s trust level below that threshold when they cause trouble.
What does suspend do? Does it revoke all access to the forum? I think @BBJMAX instead wants a user to be able to browse/read but not be able to interact in any way.
Thank you for the clarification. Now it depends on if @BBJMAX has private categories that an anon (a user not logged in) cannot see, but he wants them to see, only not interact or add/reply to it in any way.
Suspensions are a bit of a nuclear option right now, though… and if they don’t visit during the suspension, they’re just logged out with no indication of what happened (except for maybe a moderator PM when they sign back in).
A bit of UI design around Block (change it to “Posting Block”?) might make it usable again, maybe with an expiry time.
IMHO a Message is almost always in order (exception being SPAM)
I know of no way to manually Block an account. I thought it was a System auto thing.
But yes, allowing a member to log in but not “create” for a short auto-expiring amount of time could work, especially if reading the Message was required.