How To Ban A User

Is there a way to automate the removal of a ban? Let’s say set a general rule for users to be unbanned in X-amount of time.

Hi @StelaA .

I don’t believe there is a way to do this right now. However, it’s also not generally something I’d personally recommend doing unless you’re absolutely sure you want to allow tempbans to be a thing. Generally, banning a user should be a last resort and should only normally be used for cases where a particular user clearly shouldn’t be allowed to continue using the community and probably shouldn’t be allowed to return. Spammers are a very good example of this.

However, I can also see why there might be use cases for such a feature. I’ve had a look at the Ideas list but I found that it has been suggested before over at this post.

• Ability of automatic recovery from ban New Idea
• 7 Votes

Unfortunately, the idea was closed at the time as it didn’t get many votes, but a good use case might be enough inspiration for the idea to be reconsidered.

Thanks for the reply, @Blastoise186. Another thing I was wondering is if auto removal of a ban would be possible by adding a third-party script under “Customization”?

I can see where you’re going with that one! 

But unfortunately, that wouldn’t work I’m afraid as the Third-Party Scripts feature doesn’t apply to Control and the only place to ban or unban a user is via Control. It’s also a security risk to have such scripts in that section, since it would expose the script and unban feature to the front-end and could potentially allow a malicious user to abuse it. I’m pretty confident that inSided has anti-abuse countermeasures that would prevent unauthorised unbans, but it’s probably not something you’d want to find out the hard way!

There might be an API that you could integrate something with, but I couldn’t find anything in the API Documentation so it might not be available. There’s no other way I can think of which would make this work at the moment either…

On the plus side, that particular Idea post didn’t get tagged with Closed (Never) status, which suggests that inSided does consider it to be a valid suggestion that they might be willing to reconsider in the future. You never know when you can get lucky!

Haha 

Thanks again, @Blastoise186! All the info is much appreciated. :)

As for getting lucky - let’s see. I usually do 

Is there a way to see which user executed the ban?

I have checked with the team, unfortunately only our support team can currently find who has performed a ban. I have asked the product team to add this to the Moderation action export once they work on improving this export.

Question and perhaps feedback here, @Julian:

Why doesn’t the posts of a banned user become anonymized similar to when a profile is deleted? 

Someone might try to tag them, send them a private message etc

Julian’s probably busy, so you’ve got a Blastoise instead! XD

As I understand things as they are now, Anonymising a user basically destroys their account and wipes as much data as possible out of the database, including the profile. As a result, the user is also technically banned on the basis they can no longer use the account, but the “ban” reason is most likely because they wanted the account deleted.

Banning a user however, leaves the account in the database but sets a banned flag against it, preventing the user from interacting with the community. It’s possible that a banned user may have had tons of useful content though, and ideally you might not always want to anonymise all that content - especially if the ban was issued by mistake. By otherwise leaving the account unchanged, it’s much, much easier to undo an accidental ban, since unbanning the user basically just removes the flag from the profile in the database, thus restoring access.

I can think of a happy balance though. Perhaps a banned user status might work? Obviously, you might not always want to display that so ideally it could be made optional. But it’s probably the most reasonable option I can think of.

You’re right about that! Busy collecting your feedback here so I can share it with the product team. 

While I do see that disabling e.g. mentions could be quite valuable, I also have my doubts if this would make sense in all cases. E.g. I used to temporarily ban users for a week, to give them a second chance. In this case, I would not want content to be anonymized etc.. I could think that it might be interesting to offer you the option to do so when you perform a ban.

From a technical point of view, Blastoise actually explained quite well that a deletion is going quite far in terms of wiping personal data. This means that, for something like this to work for bans too, we would have to re-work some bits in order to allow you to revert that action later on.

Thanks for sharing, I will bring it up with the team. Surely an interesting thought!

Yep makes sense, thanks both!

I think the term BAN has a sense of permanence. If someone will never ever be unbanned, there’s no advantage in leaving their user profile to be viewed and interacted with. 

You mention un-banning someone. Well that’s more of a suspension. I can easily see why a suspension would include not removing their profile. Maybe this could be a separate function:

• Ban: anonymize profile, prevent logging in
• Suspend: prevent logging in 

Is there a way to customise the ban message that users see after a ban is applied? I’d like to offer a link to our disputes policy in the text, for example.

Sorry, just spotted your question, here the info you are looking for:

Module: Forum

Key: You've been banned or your account is deleted

Let me know if you need more help with this!

Why do banned users still receive email notifications for groups or forums they are a part of?

What does this actually mean? 

Hi revote! In a topic overview where you see all posts in a topic there is a ‘profile’ button (next to IP and message). If you click that button you'll also have the option to ban the user.

Thanks @TomW, for some reason I was confused 😃

Got notified to a new reply here, and came across this and wanted to give my two cents - there are many cases where you would want a ban status to be invisible to other users, particularly in the case of someone trying to send a banned user tags or private messages. In a past job, we had necessity to use suspensions as a tool to try and change someone’s behaviour - our goal was always to keep them on the community if we could, but if they were acting out and wouldn’t change what they were doing through discussions, having that discussion without them having the ability to use the community in the meantime was helpful. A change in their behaviour was most successful when they could save face within the community amongst other members because people did not know that they had had some action taken against them. Any indicator that someone was temporarily suspended would work against that.

We also had rare cases of long-standing member bans being reviewed and bringing someone back to the community after several years, and in those cases it was helpful for that member to have access to their account in full.

​@Julian - the below is a new module and key that need to be added correct? I want to update that message to let folks know that we don’t approve accounts created generic email addresses. Edit to add: How can I quickly confirm the message on the end-user side?

Julian wrote:

Sorry, just spotted your question, here the info you are looking for:

Module: Forum

Key: You've been banned or your account is deleted

Let me know if you need more help with this!

 

Hi ​@Sam77 - yes, this phrase would need to be added in the Phrases section in Control.  The easiest way to test this is to create a test account and then ban it from Control, so you can see the end-user experience for yourself.  I have a private Gmail account that I always use for this kind of testing.

Yes, I always would recommend testing these things out, just to be on the safe side. Especially when it is about something sensitive such as a ban.

Thank you both!