Forums - Thread Banning

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- - Thread Banning (http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=3967)

Quote:

Originally posted by konfliktPL@Mar 23 2005, 12:14 PM
All instances of obvious spam should be dealt with by moderators (actually I haven't seen much of them, maybe these are the people with VIP plate).

I am a mod, and i rarely close topics.I would rather clean the topic, and let people further their discussion(you see what i'm doing for you? wasting my time when i could just lock it).I leave the locking business to the admins.I do, however, lock a thread when i see it's only meant as a flame/spam(if it's in the blah blah blah section i leave it) haven.As a moderator i have tried to strike a balance between over-vigilance and too much freedom.I think this is a fantasy, as no mod can achieve it.I do hope however i got close to it

I can confirm you are a good mod, I have only seen you lock threads on a few occasions and that is for when the thread itself is for a useless purpose, you take the time to prune out spam from threads and split them off when the discussion is going elsewhere :ok:

Quote:

Originally posted by BeefontheBone@Mar 23 2005, 12:11 PM
@kovfliktPL Unfortunately the flood control is fixed for the whole forum, so it can't be turned off for just one section.

It's konfliktPL not konvliktPL. ;) I did not mean flood protection, but a post counter. :ph34r:

Don't think it can be disabled either.

Anyway reopened the jokes thing. and cleaned it up.

Quote:

Originally posted by Data@Mar 23 2005, 02:53 PM
Don't think it can be disabled either.

Anyway reopened the jokes thing. and cleaned it up.

We must start a praise topic for Data :Brain: :Brain: :Brain:
:kosta: :kosta: :kosta:

No spamming in it though

:kosta: :kosta: :kosta: Data

Damm...

Funny idea :ok:

But let`s try it at this topic..

Remove all SPAM :whistle:

Quote:

Originally posted by Titan@Mar 23 2005, 03:54 AM
Clairification: When Data said "not possible" he meant that the board software simply doesn't allow us to do that type of action.. it's a bit "crude" on that, so we have to resolve to brute force (warning, suspentions and so on) to deal with "problems" like that. I don't like it anymore then the person getting suspended, but it's the tools that limit us, not the ideas... :/

Thread banning is possible, but it is certainly not practical. I don't know exactly how forum software works, but allow me to try guessing how it works.

I imagine in the database there is a table "Master User" which contains all user (member) information. There should be a field "Status" or something like that in this table. When a user is banned, this field "Status" is updated from being an active member to being a banned member. Thus, when the user tries to login into the forum, the forum software will check whether or not this user is banned by looking at this field "Status". When a user is banned, the forum software will not allow him/her to login into the forum.

With thread banning, it is a different thing altogether. For simplicity sake, let's just pretend there are a total of 50 members, and a total of 100 threads. I imagine a table "Thread Banning" needs to be created in the database. Each of these 50 members will then have 100 records (since there are 100 threads) with a field "Status" to indicate whether they can access the threads or not. Everytime a new thread is created, 50 new records (for those 50 members) have to be added into the table "Thread Banning". Now, for example in a day there are 200 new threads, then it means 200 x 50 = 1000 new records need to be added into the table "Thread Banning". In one week, it will be 7 x 1000 = 7000 news records added. As the forum grows, the table will get bigger. Whenever a user tries to post a message on a thread, the forum software needs to check this table "Thread Banning", which means it will slow down the posting process.

Now imagine there are 5000 members and 10000 active threads... you should get the point. The posting process will be slower.

What about if a thread gets deleted? Should the corresponding records in table "Thread Banning" be deleted as well? If so, the thread deletion process will be slower. If the records are not deleted, the posting process will be slower since the forum software needs to browse more data in the table "Thread Banning".

It is true that the threads get pruned regularly, which means that some records in table "Thread Banning" can also be deleted to fasten the browsing, but IMHO it is still not practical.

So, for simplicity sake, thread banning is *not possible*.

rabadi you make it way too complicated, all you would have to store is the users that are actually banned from the thread.

However while it would be possible to implement thread banning by altering the php files and adding an extra table between the members and the post table we won't bother with this. It would just be a waste of time, and since php files would have to be edited possibly even introducing bugs or security leaks (we wouldn't want to jeapordize the main site, would we?).
When the moderator feels a thread has lost his original purpose he closes the thread it's as simple as that.

Another reason to lock a thread is when we feel an answer to a question was given.

I will lock this thread since we won't implement thread banning. ;)