Is it possible to Mute specific users?

Alex Dunne

Hello folks, looking for a bit of advice here…

We have a community user who has recently joined and comments on a lot of threads. I'm fairly certain this user is running his responses through ChatGPT and it's gotten to the stage where he is impacting others experience. Is there anyway to mute specific users, or if not, does anyone have any advice on how to handle this? The user in question is from a very important customer so it's a bit delicate - I can't really message them saying "hey, cool it on the posting" 😬

Rav Singh

Hey @Alex Dunne

You could potentially look at the Ignore add-on which would allow a member to selectively add that person to their ignore list so they no longer see their comments. This is on a per-member basis though rather than site-wide.

There's some info here - https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/117-ignore-users

Or if its starting to become a wider issue then maybe consider the Mark as Troll option - https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/95-troll-management

Before going down the road of either the above, I'd suggest maybe initiating a conversation around expectations in your Community and see if there's a disconnect there that could be remediated. Granted though, I know that's easier said than done on my part particularly with the context around them being an important client.

Alex Dunne

Thanks @Rav Singh ! I've asked to have Ignore Users enabled in my community. I think once it's live, I might take the opportunity to make a subtle post about ways you can control notifications (only following categories for posts and not comments etc.) and I'll mention that you can ignore users too. I think I'll have to also reach out to his CSM to see if they can subtly give feedback to this user.

Alex Dunne

This might be a question for the Vanilla mods, but is it possible to "shadow ban" someone? i.e. hiding a user's content from some areas of the community in such a way that it's not apparent to the user?

s_andrews

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/9424#Comment_9424

There is and it's actually about to be renamed 'Shadow Banning'. There was a recent post:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/discussion/3022/updates-to-troll-management-soon-to-be-shadow-banning

Alex Dunne

Amazing! Thank you @s_andrews

Tmetcalf

Along with shadow banning, is it possible to limit the amount of posts an account can make over a specific period of time?

Heather Wendt

@Tmetcalf there is! If you go to the Moderation tab you will see an option called Flood Control. You are able to set up some parameters for posting here (discussions & comments posted in specific timeframes, private messages and responses, etc.). You can control both the timeframe window and the number of interactions. It even allows you to put a spamblock if they try to break that control (so if someone in the scenario below tries to post 2 discussions in 90 seconds they will be spamblocked for 3 minutes. You can control the time that they are in 'community jail' as well. Hope that helps!

Tmetcalf

Yes! Flood Control - I was sure there was something. Thank you for confirming @Heather Wendt - Does this help @Alex Dunne ?

BrendanP

On an individual level, if a member is in warning level 3, their posting abiliity is reduced:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/180-community-rules-warnings#warning-levels-and-expiry

Alex Dunne

Oh this is so helpful! Thanks everyone :)