Requested feature overview description.

A box on user pages that only mods/admins can see in which information about a certain user can be written. Examples:

• Has used alts for vote-cheating in the past
• Has been really annoying to other users lately
• Quite bad tagging
• Is likely to cause issues in the forums

Maybe it can also be used in a positive way:

• Good uploading
• Writes nice forums and Wiki's
• Friendly and helpful in the comments

Which on its time could lead to positive records.

Why would it be useful?

This way it is easier to keep a track of what users have been up to rather having to tell it to individual admins (and will get lost most of the time). This will be especially effective if the information is stored somewhere as long as the box contains text.

These can also go in the place of records (taken the infractions are not worse than borderlining) by just monitoring users with a history of rule-breaking or on the verge of an infraction, like when having a heated debate in the comments.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?

User pages.

100% guarantee this will be complained about or even abused.

It sounds good on paper - it can be used like a neutral record without the stigma of an actual neutral record. We can point out good behavior, or what certain users' tagging specialties are.

Put into practice, however, may lead to favoritism and possibly even more status-driven attention-seeking than we're used to seeing already.

The site has reached a very nice level of transparency and balance between normal users and staff. Let's not work backwards.

I really, really do not like this idea for the aforementioned reasons.

I meant this to be private and for mod/admin eyes only. I don't get what's bad about something users cannot see anyway.

Justice is blind and mods/admins must act unbiased. Even if a user is helpful or a friend, if they violate the rules, they will get reprimanded regardless of anything.

So just quick notes on users' profiles that can only be viewed by admins? I'm 50/50 on this. The reason why is because I don't think we'll use it that much due to lack of enforcement and if a user warrants our attention, we just mention them in the Committee. But then on the other side of the pillow, it would be a bit convenient to have it right on their profile instead of searching up what they are doing to know their reputation

TheHuskyK9 said:
So just quick notes on users' profiles that can only be viewed by admins? I'm 50/50 on this. The reason why is because I don't think we'll use it that much due to lack of enforcement and if a user warrants our attention, we just mention them in the Committee. But then on the other side of the pillow, it would be a bit convenient to have it right on their profile instead of searching up what they are doing to know they're reputation

Exactly. Take users who vote-cheat. It would just be convenient to know that they do by checking their profile.

Or what about users that constantly post borderlining comments? Without knowing their comment history, especially if the user comments a lot, it'd be difficult to pull a conclusion. If there's that information on their profile that they have been offensive in the past, it'd make judgment easier.

We do mention them in the committee, but if they remain clean for a while, it just gets lost, while if we leave such invisible information on user pages, the information can stick around.

Hudson said:
Exactly. Take users who vote-cheat. It would just be convenient to know that they do by checking their profile.

Or what about users that constantly post borderlining comments? Without knowing their comment history, especially if the user comments a lot, it'd be difficult to pull a conclusion. If there's that information on their profile that they have been offensive in the past, it'd make judgment easier.

We do mention them in the committee, but if they remain clean for a while, it just gets lost, while if we leave such invisible information on user pages, the information can stick around.

I gotta sleep on it. Need to think.

Hudson said:
I meant this to be private and for mod/admin eyes only. I don't get what's bad about something users cannot see anyway.

It's called transparency, as mentioned, without it people in power (like you admins are, in some sense) can take more liberties while at the same time hiding that from other users, meaning the risk of detection is lowered. I'm not saying that this will happen, or that it is any different than what is already being done through other means, but it is a potential danger to be at least considered and/or steps taken to ensure it doesn't come to such things.

E.g. another admin has to approve the profile another admin create. Or some more strict, less bias prone option functionality, like we have currently for post flagging. E.g. you could have fields to enter IDs of comments, wikis, forum posts, etc. to back up some selected option. This way facts and history can be kept close at hand but potential bias or factual errors can quickly be identified by a second admin, which can be a lot harder with a simple text box where such a simple thing as writing skills or effort can influence decision making.

Or a simple way of getting rid of any transparency issues, while not disclosing information to everyone, would be to show the information only to the user it refers to. The added benefit of this would be that users easily will know what they do that is good/bad maybe long before any real action is actually taken. Though maybe this would not be a good thing to do for ban evaders, as it would maybe give hints to them about how to avoid detection.

Hudson said:
We do mention them in the committee, but if they remain clean for a while, it just gets lost, while if we leave such invisible information on user pages, the information can stick around.

I thought the idea of e.g. neutral records was just that, "warnings" which expire if you are clean for some time, seems like that policy will have to change as well then? But maybe we're talking only more severe offenses which would result in clear negative records if continued? I'm probably all wrong, but it feels a bit like a tool for hunting for reasons to (eventually) ban people, while it's supposed to just help admins make educated decisions.

I would like a feature like this, but for completely different purposes than Hudson would like to use it for.

Hudson's ideas pretty much allows for a witch hunt to form simply because it's based off of speculation where other people would then try to find evidence to support the claim, which is bad.

Personally, I would like it for hard documentation of admin correspondence with the user in question, and nothing else. This means if we warn someone about their behavior (that is not yet worth a record but can already be problematic) in a comment, dmail, or wherever we make a note that links to the warning in the question and a short summary of it. The result would be that one admin issues a warning, and all other admins are aware of said warning.
Because currently it is more the case that Ratte handles tickets, issues a warning, and nobody else knows neither the contents of said warning, or in some cases even that it has been issued at all. Having notes would solve this problem.
Also allows us to be lazier because we don't have to search through piles of dmails and comments to find that specific warning we handed out.

The other benefit would be that we can leave small notes like "User had his underage ban reversed after showing us his proper ID", "User is XYZ on FA, and has permission from artist A to post his own commissions", "User is artist B, but would like to remain anonymous and not have his artist page linked", "User is artist Z and requested his artist page to be deleted, below is a transcript of the email/dmail conversation".
All of those cases are things we as staff need to be aware of, but need not be public to the internet in general.

We should also have strict internal rules in place for this, for example the following:

• No speculation without hard evidence
• only documentation of cold, hard facts
• evidence/source must be provided or the note is invalid and can't be used to issue records
• existing notes do not allow the circumvention of the disciplinary actions as outlined in the CoC

I also believe we should not, under any circumstances, track the behavior of users past basic records. We aren't the NSA and our users should not be treated like criminals.

As with all my ideas, they can go anywhere, really. I don't focus them to be final as soon as I propose them. If anyone has good additions or alterations (that in this case go quite a different direction (for better)), that is fine.

My ideas might not always immediately look logical either, because I often think very abstract and in the light of "what if?". Pardon my poor explaining on some parts for that reason :v

Would this handle as Notes (ie Artist pages) or Blips? I think Note-style would work best, but only if it included a timestamp signature like you get on Wiki's by hitting the "Sign and timestamp" (or whatever it was called) button. This way other admins and moderators would know who to contact if something was left out, as well as knowing which articles are newer or how close to expiration an old one is--After all, if an artist previously asked to be anonymous in one note, but in another note asked to have the profile connected, being able to compare the timestamps quicker would be helpful.

Furrin_Gok said:
Would this handle as Notes (ie Artist pages) or Blips? I think Note-style would work best, but only if it included a timestamp signature like you get on Wiki's by hitting the "Sign and timestamp" (or whatever it was called) button. This way other admins and moderators would know who to contact if something was left out, as well as knowing which articles are newer or how close to expiration an old one is--After all, if an artist previously asked to be anonymous in one note, but in another note asked to have the profile connected, being able to compare the timestamps quicker would be helpful.

I'd prefer a carbon copy of F-List's system, which is pretty much like our inhouse moderator actions (or record) history pages, attached to a user, with full timestamp and who added something, can't be edited after posting (aka just make another if you made a mistake).

It sounds like it'd make it a lot easier to keep track of the thousands upon thousands of users on here. While neutral, positive and negative marks on a users profile reward/punish actions of the past; Having an ongoing "Naughty/Nice List" on users would probably make it a lot easier to notice patterns or behavior in need of a reprimand.

Let's say I've done poor/spiteful tag edits in the past, or commented in a rude manner, but not rude enough to warrant a neutral record, it would be a lot smoother of an experience to simply read through my list, instead of going through my entire tag edit list, or comment list.
So for what's my opinion is worth, I think this function would make moderating the site a lot more streamlined.

NotMeNotYou said:
I'd prefer a carbon copy of F-List's system, which is pretty much like our inhouse moderator actions (or record) history pages, attached to a user, with full timestamp and who added something, can't be edited after posting (aka just make another if you made a mistake).

Ah, you've already got a system for it on F-List? Sounds good!