If they are going to those lengths then I am sure they can come up with a better email/username algorithm.
They don’t and never have on my vB forums. As far as I know they are not exposed on IPB forums and I don’t recall them being viewable on PHPBB forums either - but I may be wrong as it’s been a long time since I used PHPBB.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. Several times I have been asked whether a user’s account details are private and kept separate from moderators.
Not in the forums per se, but in ModCP definately
And I wonder what they have to hide?
That wouldn’t stop our current plague of profile spammers, who are all setting their locations within the US, and all using US IP addresses. What is a giveaway, as @cpradio already mentioned, is the format of the e-mail address.
Not on any of mine. You can enable it by giving mods ability to edit profiles - which I don’t do. I think most people will expect moderator responsibility is to help with moderation of topics/posts - not the moderation of user accounts.
Why do they have to have anything to hide? Everyone has a right to expect their details to be private and kept relatively secure.
I’d guess there are other tell-tale signs, like the IPs not belonging to well-known ISPs.
Sooner or later they will change their email/username format - what will you do then?
What are these accounts actually doing? Posting spam? Are there any other tools you could use? Like phrase replacement? (So you can prevent certain domains/names from being spammed.)
As they do, They are private and secure.
Moderators being able to access them does not make them otherwise.
As we’ve always done, look at all available information to make an informed judgement.
The harder it is for Moderators to do so, the easier it is for problem acounts
Your view on moderation greatly differs than the view we have. We have an admin team of 2, our moderation team is near ~10. If I had to constantly keep asking the two admins to Ban X, or suspend Y, that’d be frustrating. Those are moderator actions on an account.
Knowing the persons email address is critical for both of those actions (especially the first, as you’d want to ensure the email was sufficiently blocked for re-registering).
I think you are a very low minority on this one. I wouldn’t be able to perform 60% of what we deal with on our instance without seeing the email address. The posts that “feel off”, but are not obvious spam, and thus require a small bit of investigation. It sounds like you should make your “moderators” as TL 4 as that grants most of the ability they have now (except they can’t deal with flags) and then they can’t see the email address/edit profiles of others.
Mods banning spammers or problematic members is fine - as usually an admin will set out guidelines on when this intervention is needed (we have a mod rulebook). I don’t think though, that mods, who are usually unpaid volunteers, should have access to the private details of users.
Our mods have never needed to view the email addresses of users - and we have been hit by all sorts; organised ‘troll’ groups, disgruntled ex members repeatedly creating accounts, mass bot spam, eastern block spam, members just wanting additional accounts, etc.
What kind of problems are these accounts creating on your site? Spam posts? PM Spam?
All of that and more.
True, they may not be needed, neither should they be the sole criteria for making decisions.
They are but one, and a crucial one, of things that should be looked at before making a decision.
Your Mods are to be commended for working under less than optimal conditions.
The answer has been provided
Seems that all that can be said has been said, it’s your forum so of course you are free to do as you choose. But personally I prefer to have as many tools for the job at my disposal as possible.