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Banning vs. Deleting a Forum Member?
MasterOne
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So a forum member has broken forum rules and he has been voted out by the forum owners. I am unsure about how to handle such a situation with banning vs. deleting that user account.
- What exactly happens when a user gets banned?
- Where does the reason for banning show up and whom is it visible to?
That user most likely will not try to participate any longer anyway, but the content he created should be preserved.
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@MasterOne
On the couple of occasions we've had to ban a member on our forum, we've just set their user status to 'Guest'.
Their posts remain, they can't comment, and it creates very little fuss.
In 2.0.18.8, banning is a flag on the user table that short circuits all permissions to false. This way it keeps the user record (preventing another user from registering with the same name).
Deleting is dropping the user record from the database. It will also handle all the user's content in one of 3 ways. You can 'Keep User Content', 'Blank User Content', or 'Remove User Content'.
The biggest difference between deleting vs banning a forum member is you can unban an account. You cannot un-delete an account.
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I wish I could add a sig here, then it wouldn't be a problem that I always forget to mention which version I'm using. So this is about 2.1b1 soon to be upgraded to 2.2.
@whu606, very nice, didn't even think of that! But I have the pluging EasyMembersList installed, means other will surely be curious if that one member suddenly shows up as Guest there.
@hgtonight, is the fact that a user is banned showing up anywhere? And what about the reason that can be selected / entered when banning a user?
I think I'm more in favor of banning that user, but it's better to know the exact effects before doing so. Once banned, if that's going to show up anywhere in the forum, and what the user is seeing if he should come back and tries to log in.
In 2.1b1, much the same happens when banning. It will show up in the activity log with the reason selected. It will show in the UserInfo module that the account has been banned. It replaces the user's avatar with a banned photo. It will show up on the profile that the account is banned. It prevents users from creating sessions and authenticating.
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@hgtonight, okay that's the nasty kind of ban then that lets everybody know on first sight, which means in my specific case I'll go the "Guest" role route.