Account / User profile: User moderation assistance / User log

[andreoda]

Tracking and moderating users can be difficult due to the amount of users on the site. The communication between trusted users, moderators and admins can be done on the website and the discord but can be confusing overall.

It can be very useful to implement a log on user pages. The log should not show the activity of the user but the activity of what had been done to the user account by the user and admins/mods etc. It is different from the general audit log.
It should also show notes for reasoning.
Similar to how the report page looks.

Example:

Log for user "xyz"

Time | Author | Type | Notes

5. Jan. 2025 05:30 | andreoda | Updated user account (Regular) | user apologized
6. Jan. 2025 20:00 | andreoda | Updated user account (Limited) | continued comment spam despite warnings
7. Jan. 2025 20:00 | spongebob | Reported (Spamming) | this user spams comments nonstop
8. Jan. 2025 04:40 | xyz | Ownership claim | Account verification request: Proof...
9. Jan. 2025 03:00 | xyz | Updated settings (Names) | changed user name from "yxc" to "xyz"

The log should show the changes to the user account (by the user and by admins/mods) and the reports made regarding this user (reported for spamming etc.).
Admins/Mods should be able to attach notes when changing a user account/type.

The note sources:

• notes from reports
• notes from mods/admins
• notes from the system (automatic generations)

[Calamitish]

Made a quick mock up, something like this?
Essentially a "View modifications" button for users that is only visible to mod+.

Not sure if it's something trusted users should have access to, though.

[mn7216]

Not sure if it's something trusted users should have access to, though.

• limiting it to mods+ doesn't make sense considering:
  1. trusted users have limiting permissions.
  2. it's not a feature that can really be used maliciously .
  3. trusted are involved in the process of reporting/limiting to begin with.
  4. it would be a great asset for trusted users to tell when they should get mods involved instead of the (rather fickle) current system
     I'm not sure of a single reason why it would be limited to mods+

[Calamitish]

Reasons I personally have against:

1. You start to blur the line between moderator and trusted user. I view "Trusted users" as users that edit the db at a higher level than regular users and have more ability to do such edits. While they sure can assist, they're not moderators. And this is essentially a moderation tool. At which point, assign more moderators.
2. It is a form of confidential information. You're gatekeeping it on at least some level. Giving a larger amount of accounts access to a tool like this increases the risk of it being compromised.
3. The jump from regular to trusted user becomes bigger.
4. I agree that it'd be a good asset, for moderators.

I get wanting to involve trusted users more in the process and that things might be a bit overwhelming, but I don't think that the solution here is to give them blanket access to this kind of info. The solution would be to assign more moderators.

On a side note, I actually wasn't aware that trusted users had the ability to limit other users.
I do 100% agree that this would be a useful tool, though.

[andreoda]

A reason for mod+ only would be that it shows account changes, which ones is of debate but it could show registration dates / log in dates and time + IP, name changes, email changes, etc. (which can also be found on the general audit log)
if those things are only visible to mods or only admins, they should not be visible to trusted there as well
but that is easy to solve since it could just hide the specific info based on who views the log