Hi Folks,

Just a quick announcement to say that I've changed the default behavior of the temp-bans (Dunces) so that Dunced members can still view the Forums while they're Dunced. They just won't be able to post or participate until their Dunce is over.

I can't say whether this change will be permanent, but I'm willing to give it a try since the real issue with rule-breakers is their posts, not their eyes.

Well, time will tell if this is will be a good change, but it's not a bad idea.

Thanks Andres

@Andres: Terific

@Andres: Ive talked to a cpl of dunced people and they say they can only view individual threads or just the forum main page...the one with the categories. Maybe this was by design or the only way it cld be done, Idk....was just wondering if there was a way to just remove dunced peoples quick reply box and reply button....maybe that wld be too time consuming, Idk....just a thought I had.

It looks like Dunced member didn't have permission to view the "New Posts" and "Today's Posts" so I've gone ahead and granted them permission to view them, so now their Forum experience should be identical to when they're not Dunced, except when the try to post. Of course, that raised another issue, which is that Dunced users would no longer be able to see they've been Dunced until they tried to post, so to fix that issue, I've added a note at the top of the Forums of Dunced users alerting them that they have been Dunced. For now, it doesn't provide the reason for the Dunce nor when it will expire since that would require digging into the Forum DB to pull, so until it does, Dunced users will have to try to post to see why they got Dunced and when it will expire.

All in all, this should make being Dunced a lot more user-friendly, which should help counter-balance the strictness I mentioned earlier.

@Andres: Just my observations from Dunceland...it worked great...although, the pink Im dunced box at the top of the forum pages didnt show up until abt an hour after I was dunced...and is still up now.

Mine worked the whole time.. very good idea btw Ty for adding it

The problem is that the only time the Forum software tells us a Forum user is banned is when the user first connects to the Forums in a Session. So if you're already connected to the Forums when you're dunced, the site won't see it until your current Session ends and you start a new one and access the Forums. Similarly, when your dunce ends while you're accessing the Forums, the site won't see it since the Forum software doesn't communicate it, so you will see the dunce message until your current session ends. The quickest way to get rid of that dunced box when you're no longer dunced is to simply log out and log back in.

It's not a perfect solution, and I could improve it by actually querying the Forum database on each pageload to check whether a user is dunced/no longer dunced, but I don't want to waste site resources on making the site more user-friendly for users who misbehave. :)