Animation Source Forums

There is this growing bubble of topics about these topics, and I wanted to centralise one where we could discuss the warning/banning system, along with the moderator one.

For the moderator system, I think it should be dissolved into three distinct groups:
1) 'Senior Moderators' – these are global moderators, appointed by steet. These are the ones that can issue bans to members, and are listed on every site.
2) 'Site Builders' – have the same role as current ones, but have the added responsibility of appointing third category moderators and being in overall control of their site. They cannot directly ban members, but they put a '20% warning' on one.
3) 'Section Moderators' – these include fanfic, fanart, game book, image etc. moderators. These cannot issue bans, but can SUSPEND members from certain parts of the site, and issue '10%' warnings'.

Along with the mod system, the warning system needs reworking too. Rather than having 'two strikes and you're out!' policy, I think we should have a percentage based warning system. This would mean that, if you were warned for a minor offence; you would get say... a 5% warning. However, if you were to get a more severe warning, it would be around 30%. If you get more than 15% on your warning bar, you join the moderator watch list. Get more than 60%, you get a ban.

So a member (and moderators) know where they are along the warning scale, members should have a 'warning bar' on their profile.

And that also ties in the banning system. There should be three different ban types:
1) 'Full Ban' – completely locked out of the site, can only access ban box. Bans IP address, hostname, email and username. Only administrators or Senior Moderators can issue these (aimed mostly at trolls).
2) 'Partial Ban' – you can still access the whole site, you just can't post or modify anything. You can only post stuff in the banned box. Admins/Senior Mods can issue these bans, and this should be the default ban for those that reached 90% on the infraction system.
3) 'Section Suspension' – you can still access the site, post and modify your stuff... EXCEPT a certain section (whether it's fanfics, fanarts, game books, etc.). All moderators can implement suspensions.

Just my 2¢

I am in disagreement of this, but that's probably just because I think the current system is fine.

In particular, I am MOST in disagreement with the "bar" or whatever it is. 90% is a LOT of warnings, when a person really should only need one or two to get the picture and stop doing whatever they are doing wrong.

A warning can be anything from 10% to 100%. It just depends on the severity of the offence.

EDIT:// Just to elaborate more, it means you could have anything from 5 warnings to just a single one. As the bar would be 'moveable', as opposed to being just '+10'.
EDIT2:// I've checked my forum's bar, with SMF, it appears as though you get banned with more than 60% of your warning bar filled.

I agree with Skull. The only thing I think can be fine is to add some mods like it was before ( fanart mods, fan image mods ) but something like one for a section. Like this, this would be easyer for global mods ( but I'm not sure they'll need it if the " new " rules would be agreeing by Steet ).

For the warnings, there is problem. When you send a warning to a member, if you don't make it by the forum, you don't know if this members already get one. And since it's 3 warnings for one ban ( depend of the time ), it's not easy to know. What could be nice is a way to know if a members already get some and can be see only by mods on the site.

But for your idea, I think it's some nice one ! I've already ban' some members cause they was big art thief, but evenbanned, they was able to send stuff o_O

And other problem is the guest messages ... Face it, most of the time it's troll or flamming message ! On the french site, we want them to be activated by mods cause it's a lot of trouble. Recently, we got a troll who said " ugly " on all the fanart or image from the popular members from lion king source Fr. When you know than most of our members are less than 14 years old, I let you imagine the result ...