In refactoring the forum from Vanilla to Discourse, and expanding the forum scope to work with both the CoG and also with the two blogs I’m hosting, I wanted to give us CoGers a specific section all our own. Think of this category like a turbo-charged version of War Stories from the old forum—war stories go hear, along with anything else having to do with tech support and general computer-y bitching.
It’s like war stories + general discussion, I suppose—the regular general category is for general general talk.
Is this forum relatively public now? I haven’t seen any sign of spammers, but I’ve been banning plenty on CoG, and this format doesn’t have some of the pre-emptive ban options that the other two board formats have.
It helps to be prepared! No actual plans to move, but I babbled a bit on what I’m actually going to do with this forum. For now, since Discourse is still in crazy-active development (and still has crazy-times bugs) I can’t see actually relocating.
The ban options right now do include mail domains, but I don’t know if you can actually see them—if not, I should probably just upgrade your access level to admin. Do you as a mod have access to the admin console at /admin? The email domain blocklist settings are there, and I’ve added every domain currently in the list on the CoG vanilla forums.
Spam control also has far more community-driven options with Discourse. Nothing takes the place of a prepared mod, but the flagging that normal users can do both hides posts and also can lead to community-imposed bans—with enough flagging, a new user (trust level 0) can be auto-banned, if I’m remembering the docs correctly.
Are we moving here tomorrow? Nah. Is this forum public, though? Definitely. I also intend to use it for blog comments and other things, too, but the CoG forums will keep a dedicated presence, definitely.
I do have access to the admin console, but I don’t see any options for banning other than user by user. I can ban, deactivate, or delete a user if I go in to their profile. I can also change their trust level or title. If I look in the “Banned” section, there is nothing there for me. Nothing there under “Blocked” either. By the way, what’s the difference between “Banned” and “Blocked”?
Right—subtle difference. A blocked user can still login and so can still see things that his/her login privilege allows—so, for example, if a user has access to a hidden or privileged category, blocking them means they can still read posts in that category. They just can’t post themselves. It’s more of a temporary time-out.
Banning is a ban—user can’t log on. More of a permanent thing (though the ban can be lifted, of course).
Blacklisting registration by IP address (either singly or in ranges) isn’t yet supported, but it’s on the list. Blacklisting registration by email domain is already supported, but it’s in the “Settings” area of the admin console, which mods apparently don’t have access to.
I’ll post a note on Meta about that—seems like something we’d want mods to be able to do.
I can see some boards not wanting mods to have that access. After all, a mod is usually just someone who keeps an eye on the posts and user community, not necessarily doing pre-emptive banning and such. I appreciate the trust you have in us mods, though!
