The User Infraction system is designed to automate the the management of misbehaving users.
The first step in the system is the creation of Infraction Levels. These levels will vary based on the content of your forum and the scale of the system that you wish to create. You can create just a few levels or can get very detailed with many levels covering a myriad of forum infractions.
When creating levels, keep in mind a point total at which you wish to start penalizing users by taking away permissions. If you envision taking away a certain permission when a user accumulates 10 infraction points then you need to consider how many points will be given for each infraction and how quickly the user can get to 10 points.
Each infraction level has an expiration time. When the infraction expires, the associated points are removed from the user's point total and the user's infraction groups are recalculated.
Infraction levels can also be allowed to be given as warnings. A warning does not add any infraction points to the user's point total. Warnings serve as a method to remind user's of your forum's rules and encourage them to be followed without awarding infraction points. Moderators have the ability to give an infraction or a warning for those levels that have the warning ability enabled. Moderators will be forced to send a message to the user that details why the infraction is being given. This message will use the Private Messaging System if it is enabled. Otherwise an email will be sent if your forum has Email enabled. At the same time, a new thread for discussion of the infraction will be created in a pre-determined forum. This forum is setup in the vBulletin Options > User Infractions Options section.
There are two methods in wich you may penalize users. The first method is utilizing infraction groups to gradually remove permissions.
Normal permissions work by combining all of a user's usergroup permissions and granting a permission for any that have a yes. Infraction group permissions work in the reverse as all infraction group permissions are combined and any permission with a No is taken from the user. You should set up your infraction usergroups (in the Usergroup Manager) by setting all permissions to Yes and then setting those that you wish to take away to No.
Any permissions set to No will effect all forums. If you only wish to penalize a user in certain forums, set all permissions to Yes and then set up custom permissions at Usergroups > Forum Permissions for the forum in question using the infraction group.
A user can have multiple infraction groups as they will gain all groups that apply to their primary usergroupid and accumulated points.
The second method by which you may penalize users is by setting up automatic bans. You may set up bans that only apply to specific usergroups as well as apply to all users. Bans may be triggered either by points or by the number of infractions that the user has received. An example setup would be to ban a user for one week for receiving their third infraction and then banning them permanently for receiving their sixth infraction.
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