Feedback on Warnings2
Since we'll be working on moderation in the not-so-distant future, here are some comments about current pain points for Gazillion (Marvel Heroes) after we moved them from the old Warnings addon to Warnings2.
The ability to assign duration to violations from the options from before. Being forced into them is not good, again making us have to use the 0 point violation so that people aren't outright banned or warned for having points adding to level 5.
The ability to create temp ban duration either from the Ban option. If we want to temp insta-ban someone right now, our only option is to assign two violations in a row that add up to 5 (which seems cumbersome) or utilize Ban and then manually keep a record of when we banned them so we can unban them, which seems unnecessarily complex. We used to handle temp bans by creating a level 5 warning and assigning the duration of that warning to match how long we wanted them banned - i.e. 1 day, 3 days, a week, etc. As it is, we appear to only be able to assign ban durations based on warning level for 1 week or two weeks, and that just seems very limiting to me. Sometimes we have an offender who has an egregiously bad comment but is otherwise a clean poster. Not being able to easily temp ban them for an appropriate duration appears to be a huge oversight in this addon.
This is what the docs site says:
We discovered that additional options created ambiguity among moderator teams over what an appropriate warning level was for particular user behaviors. By limiting the number of options, we've increased clarity for how to use the feature.
That's not been a problem for Marvel Heroes historically. They really made use of the temporary banning feature and separate durations for individual warnings.
While I know this kind of granularity isn't possible for them right now, perhaps bearing this kind of possibility in mind for when we work on moderation tools would be useful for more than just this client.
Julie 
Comments
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The point values & durations can definitely be modified via DB. That would be a good thing to add to the UI.
My take on temporary bans is that they are a scourge on community management and that a ban is permanent, full stop. The theory of the Warnings2 setup is that there are steps taken along the path to reaching a temporary ban, and perhaps that that is even more threat than reality. To give them a "just temp ban" option is to endorse that as a moderation technique, which I don't like. I'm not saying we won't ever, but it's not something I'm interested in championing.
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So, just to talk a bit about temporary bans... While I do agree with you that a ban should be permanent, what's your ideal punishment pyramid? For me, it starts with a warning (no points), then a warning with points, then another points warning, which ought to lead to jail if that happens soon enough, then... what's the next escalation? A permanent ban?
A temporary ban fills the gap, I find, between jail and a permanent ban -- which is how things currently work. But I can see times when you'd want more granularity there. That flexibility doesn't currently exist.
Particularly when coming from the original Warnings addon, I can see how the loss of that flexibility can be a pain point. What do we have to replace a temporary 3 day ban? A temporary 1-week ban?
Like I said, while I personally agree with the idea of a ban being a permanent thing, we have previously supported a more granular tool and the pain point here is the lack of something filling those gaps.
My two cents!
Julie
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I'm not really clear what they want that we can't accommodate short of making it less clicks. You can set a warning to any duration, and the warning duration is the temp ban duration, so if they want it 3 days or 1 week, it doesn't matter.
Personally, I think warning at all is strictly a tool for very large communities and that, yes, it should just permanently ban them at the top of the scale. Temporary bans are so much virtual hand-wringing. If you don't want them for a week, why would you want them the week after? No one uses the week to sit and think about their life and what they've done, they just pick up where they left off. You don't need something to fill the gap, you need to make a decision as a community manager and move on.
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