UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 7 Version 7 Support Posts are moderated question

Hello all, first post and possibly a lengthy one so I appreciate your forbearance. I've searched both the forum and the FAQ and not seen an answer so here goes:

What I'm trying to do

I'm trying to create a "Penalty box" group that users who are creating "problem" posts can be put in where their posts require approval by a moderator or admin before they appear in the forum.

Note that all users are in the "Users" group by default.

How I did it

1. Created a new group called "Preview"
2. Copied the perms from "Users" to "Preview"
3. Changed the permission setting for each forum for "All New Posts are Moderated" to "1" for the Preview group. Note that it is "0" for the Users group

To put someone in the penalty box I use the control panel (member management->edit profile) and change their group membership. I remove them from the User group and add them to the Preview group.

What happens

A Preview member makes a post, this post is correctly flagged as requiring approval to the user and the post shows in the "Approve Posts" list.

But this works for only one post.

After that, they're automatically put back in the Users group by the forum software since that's the default group for all members though they remain in Preview and are then able to post freely without prior approval.

Speculation

In the forum permissions tab for "All New Posts are Moderated" it has a "v" indicating (quoting from the page): "If a user belongs to multiple groups, a ^ indicates the user will get the highest permission, a v indicates they will get the lowest."

My interpretation of this is that if a member is in both Users and Preview they'd get the lowest capability meaning their posts would be moderated but this doesn't seem to work.

Suggestions? Is this a known bug or have I omitted something or done something wrong? If there's another way to achieve the same end result (a group whose posts must be approved prior to appearing on the forum) that'd be fine, I'm not wed to this mechanism. I just want something that works and isn't too onerous to implement.

Thanks in advance.

There is a feature that will autopromote a person to a group based on number of posts.
Check:
Control Panel » Group Management
look at the user and preview row
to the right will be a column called post count.
If you have say a 1 in user post count. as soon as that user posts one time he will be promoted to user group.

Also highest is 1 lowest is 0 literally.
even though the note says 0 disabled and 1 enabled

Hi Ruben and thanks for the reply.

I should have mentioned this but thought it an extraneous detail. We also have a group called "Newbies" that new users are put in which has the interval between posts set to 5 minutes (this has done wonders to decrease spam "drive by attacks" where they hit every forum btw). The "Users" group therefore has 10 in post count so Newbies are promoted to Users after 10 posts.

Needless to say, most people in Preview have many more than 10 posts so they're instantly put in Users after their first post.

Perhaps it's an either/or choice? Get rid of Newbies so people aren't auto-promoted to Users or not be able to use the Preview mechanism?

So it's interpreted as a numerical rather than logical value?

Only when comparing across multiple groups.

I just noticed your newbies post.
That would do it.
Do you have stop forum spam enabled? That should alleviate the spammers.
Just fyi.
To moderate a forum not user.
Most people use say the preview group as the default group.
So they are moderated. Then they auto promote to say the user group.
without moderation.
Doing this in reverse for a user not forum is slightly difficult.

BTW did you check your postcount fields?
Looks like from your post the newbies post count of 10 is your issue.

I myself do not moderate by user but you may want to try the -1 setting for the preview group.
Since that setting actually deletes a permission not enable it.

Hi Ruben and thanks for your follow-on reply.

I've pretty much concluded that "Newbies" and "Preview" is an either/or choice.

I don't want to use the Preview group as the default group with promotion to Users because I don't want new forum users to have to wait until their posts are approved. I created the "Newbies" mechanism with a 5 minute wait between posts for new users because we had a rash of spammers joining the forum and making a couple dozen spam posts before they could be shut down (and yes, stop forum spam is enabled). The Newbies mechanism has been very effective since few spammers are willing to invest that kind of time on a single site.

Preview is for another purpose entirely. It is to prevent an existing user who's angry at something/someone from running amok on the forum. It has also been useful when someone has been given a temporary ban in preventing them from causing damage out of vengeance upon their return.

So to summarize:

1. Newbies is for new users. The permissions are the same as for regular users except the post interval is set to 5 minutes.
2. Users is the group Newbies is promoted to after 10 posts. The permissions are the same except there's no restriction on post interval.
3. Preview is for "problem cases" where we want to see (and approve/disapprove) what's posted before it appears on the forum.

So any trouble maker who has been on the forum for a while will be in "Users" and "Preview" after their first post. There's no way that I can think of to enforce approval of new posts for a user who is in two groups, one of which has "New posts are moderated" set to "1" and the other set to "0".

There's no way to have all three capabilities that I can think of.

I also don't see a way to use "-1" to accomplish what I'm trying to do.

I'm concluding it really is an either/or choice.

I know this thread is quite old, but I had the exact same problem. My solution was to edit the file scripts/addpost.inc.php

There is a section that determines if the post is approved. I just added a query to check if the user belongs to the "preview" group, then added
if ($in_preview_group) { $approved = "0";}
That way it doesn't matter if the user is part of another group, their posts will always require approval if they belong to the preview group.

I couldn't find any way to do this in the control panel.