In an online community, "trolls" are people who intentionally start fights with other users by provoking them with off-topic, incendiary, or divisive content. Their goal is to purposely upset users and derail the conversation.
The Shadow Banning addon allows Admins and Moderators in your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community to prevent this from happening by shadow-banning offending users.
Effects of shadow-banning a user
It's important to note that users who are shadow-banned are not notified of this action; as far as they know, nothing has changed in their account or in their ability to participate.
- Only Admins and Moderators with the
Moderation > Manage permission can see content by shadow-banned users. - A red "Shadow Banned" label displays on the shadow-banned user's Profile page, BUT this label is visible to Admins and Moderators only.
- Shadow-banned users can still post in your Vanilla community, BUT their posts are not visible to other users.
NOTE: The idea behind this moderation tool is that if other users don't engage with these users' posts (which they can't because they don't display), they will either stop posting or adhere to the community rules and etiquette.
Enable the Shadow Banning addon
The Shadow Banning addon must be enabled for this feature to be available in your Vanilla community.
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
- Click the Shadow Banning toggle to enable it.
Shadow-banning and shared accounts
The Shadow Banning feature provides an additional benefit called Fingerprint checks, which registers and displays all of a user's accounts on their profile (i.e., their shared accounts).
This is especially helpful regarding shadow-banning because, with it, you can identify users who are leveraging multiple accounts from the same device in order to work around their banned status.
NOTE: There is a limitation with this feature: these shared accounts are determined by cookie, not IP address, so it is not foolproof.
Enable fingerprint checks
- On the Dashboard > Settings > Addons > Addons page, click the settings icon next to the Shadow Banning addon.
- Click the toggle to enable fingerprint checks (i.e., shared accounts).
- Specify how many accounts can share a single fingerprint.
- Click Save.
Required permission
In order to use this feature, you must belong to a Role with the Garden > Moderation > Manage permission. This is generally reserved for Admins and Moderators.
To learn how to access and manage your Roles and their permissions, see:
How to shadow ban a user
NOTE: For first time and/or minor offenses, you may want to consider warning the user before shadow-banning them. If an Admin or Moderator determines that the user hasn't changed their behaviour after being warned, use of this tool is warranted and recommended.
- Navigate to the user's profile page.
- Click the actions menu and select Shadow Ban.
A red "Shadow Banned" label displays on the user's Profile page.
- This label is visible to Admins and Moderators only.
- The user is not notified and has no indication that anything has occurred.
Remove shadow banned status
- Navigate to the banned user's profile page.
- Click the actions menu and select Lift Shadow Ban.
The user's standard posting abilities are restored.
Where/how might other users see a shadow-banned user's posts?
There are a two circumstances where a shadow-banned post could slip "under the radar" and be accessible:
- Via a direct link. While unlikely, if a user received a direct link to a shadow-banned user's post, they'd be able to access it, in spite of the user's status and limitations.
- Shadow-banned user posts can still technically be found via external search engines, as they'll find and index the content.
For these reasons, it's important to know when to shadow-ban a user and when to simply ban them and delete their posts entirely.