Over the years things like why was someone banned? Or what does partial restriction mean? One of the things I have mentioned over the years was when you see “account auto closed” you did not know if it was the member’s request or they got banned.
Namepros has now upgraded their software to provide specific reasons for every account designation.
Good news!
This was a significant undertaking that required significant parts of our forum software to be rewritten, but we’ve done it!
All members now have an “Account” field on their profiles (under the Information tab) and as part of their member cards (the overlay that appears when you click/tap on a username).
The “Account” field has the following possible group values (each is shown when applicable):
- Guest: The account has been unregistered, which means it is both banned and deleted. Generally, this means it was deleted before the registration process was completed, e.g., because it appeared to be a spambot registration and we did not allow it to fully register an account.
- Note: In the future, we may allow guests (people without registered accounts) to do slightly more than read on NamePros. If we do, then “Guest” could also mean that an account is unregistered and never attempted to register. These accounts would not show “Account Closed” unless they were banned from participating as a guest.
- New Member: The member may not have established themselves on NamePros yet, or the account may have certain restrictions on it that cause a demotion from Established Member to New Member.
- Established Member: The member has established themselves as a real person on NamePros. This will not display on an account while they have certain active restrictions (e.g., restrictions that enforce greater rate limits).
- Top Contributor: The member has earned VIP status.
- Note: This will not display on an account while it has any active restrictions.
- VIP Member: The member has VIP status. The member may have been grandfathered or granted VIP status (e.g., for being prominent in the domain industry).
- Note: This will not display on an account while it has any active restrictions.
- Upgraded Members: The member has paid for an account upgrade.
- Important: Upgrades do not bypass account restrictions.
- Account Closed: The highest priority group and will show first. Indicates that the account is banned. This could be for any reason, including (1) it’s a possible spambot, (2) the member continues to create disallowed accounts and this helps to block the creation of additional accounts, or (3) the account was closed years ago before this new system existed to specify the reason, and we do not yet have an automated way to determine why the account was closed, so it could be closed for any reason, such as being a scammer or a harmless request by a member to close their account.
- Reason: The way accounts become closed has changed many times over the years, across different forum software, so we tried to standardize everything as best as we could, but this group may still contain members that need to manually have their account updated to our current procedures and policies.
- Account Closed (Disallowed): Indicates that the account is not allowed. Generally, it means the account is a duplicate/secondary account and either (1) they must upgrade it or upgrade their primary account to re-open it, or (2) the member is not allowed another account, regardless of upgrades, due to restrictions on one of their accounts.
- Account Suspended (Warnings): The account has been closed temporarily due to exceeding the threshold of warning points.
- Account Suspended: The account is closed temporarily for an unspecified reason. It is unspecified for the same reason as Account Closed.
- Restricted (Market): Banned from the marketplace.
- Restricted (Spam Risk): Self explanatory.
- Restricted (Proxy Risk): Self explanatory.
- Restricted (85-100%): Indicates that ~85-100% of functionality is restricted, e.g., cannot edit posts, vote in polls, create polls, add attachments, tag, or link. The member may pose a high risk to others.
- Restricted (Posts): These accounts cannot create threads, post replies to threads, update their profile statuses, or post on member profiles (including their own).
- Restricted (50-70%): Indicates that ~50-70% of functionality is restricted, e.g., cannot edit posts, vote in polls, or add attachments. The member may pose a medium risk to others.
- Restricted (15-30%): Indicates that ~15-30% of functionality is restricted. The member may pose a low risk to others.
- Restricted (DM): The account cannot add members, start, receive, or reply to direct messages unless a NamePros moderator is a participant or the sender.
- Restricted (66% DM): The account cannot add members, start, or reply to direct messages unless a NamePros moderator is a participant.
- Restricted (33% DM): The account cannot add members to (or start) direct messages except (with) NamePros moderators.
- Restricted (Chatroom): Banned from using the chatroom.
- Restricted (Polls): The member cannot create or vote in polls.
- Restricted (10%): Indicates that ~10% of functionality is restricted, e.g., cannot use reactions (Like, Dislike, etc.).
- Restricted (7%): Indicates that ~7% of functionality is restricted, e.g., cannot write Trade Reviews.
- Restricted (5%): Indicates that ~5% of functionality is restricted, e.g., cannot add a signature or edit an existing signature.
- Account Closed (Requested): The lowest priority group. The member requested to have their account closed and may request to open it again at any time.
The highest priority group above will appear as their user title (underneath their username throughout the forums) unless they have a custom title set. We tried to choose the priorities based on which information we believe is most important compared to other information. For example, it’s more important to know that members are restricted from the marketplace than it is to know that they’re new, but both can be seen under their “Account” information.
In short, this information shows every member’s account level (e.g., Established), state (open, closed, or deleted), and status (whether restricted), including some details about how/why its that way if the account is restricted/closed.
Notes:
- This is not a complete list of reasons why a member may be in a group.
- Some members may be in the wrong group, but we were careful and spent a lot of time confirming that many members (possibly all) are in the correct group(s).
- This does not specify whether an account has active reminders or active warnings due to rule violations, but that may be added in the future.
- We will try to update this post if information in it changes.
Please contact us if you notice anything that looks out of place or like it may be incorrect so that we can double check it.
Thanks!
Randall says
The maintenance on this setup would be a full time job. I sometimes think that things need to be simple and this seems over complicated.
What do you think?
Samer says
Bookmarked for future reference.
Restricted (Chatroom) is often temporary
and would put below Restricted (5%)
Thanks Ray!
MapleDots says
Too much of everything is not necessarily a good thing. You cannot enjoy a good meal if your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you want to sample everything.
I would much rather see less than more…. example…
Four Forum Groups
– buy
– sell
– domains
– off topic
Buy and Sell where the OP can specify discuss the domain or offers only.
The owner of the topic sets the rules not a moderator. In other words established members would say what is and what is not allowed in THEIR topic.
Small, tight, hip, modern, fluid, no complicated software, big posting buttons, easy, easy, easy.
This type of format has been talked about many times in some of video meetings I have been too.
MapleDots says
Just wanted to add…
A forum I used to run had a policy to never delete a topic and we almost never banned a member. Instead we had a hidden Hall of Shame section that did not index on google. Restricted members could only post there and all useless dribble was moved into that section as well.
Interestingly enough that ended up being a pretty popular section and new visitors and google never saw that section. You had to be a registered user for it to show up so it stayed off the search engines.
If you are a dick you go to the hall of shame, period
Lots of things one can do without overcomplicating things.