Thu Apr 02 2020

...

Banning, and Shadow Banning With FastComments

Overview

The FastComments moderation toolset now offers the ability to ban or shadow ban a user. Additionally, if you are transitioning from another platform, you can ban users via email on the Banned Users page.

Side Effects of Banning

Banning a user from the Moderation page will also delete the corresponding comment, regardless of whether you choose shadow banning or not.

All bans are currently permanent but can be reversed via the Banned Users page.

Moderators

Moderators have the ability to ban users; however, they currently cannot access the Banned Users list or ban users via email. We will look into this for future releases.

The "Banned Users" metric has also been added to the Moderators page, allowing you to see how many users a particular moderator has banned.

Shadow Bans

When you shadow ban a user from your site with FastComments, it will appear as though their votes and comments were successful to them; however, the results are not saved (unless they refresh the page, since we only "fake it" for that session). Banning and shadow banning can have different impacts on your community, so consider this carefully before you click that Ban button. Banned users may react negatively, and shadow banned users may submit support tickets inquiring why their comments are not saving.

Overall, we hope this is beneficial for those of our customers who need it, but it should be used judiciously. Cheers!