Moderating users

Suggested Courses of Action

When you spot something out of the ordinary, we suggest these steps:

1. Take a look at the user's post history. On user's profile page click 'Posts'. This will possibly show more bad posts by the same person.
2. If the content is spam or off-topic, you can delete it immediately and block the person's account. Otherwise, send them a note through their contact form about it. E.g.:
   

   Your post Foobar on http://drupal.org/node/1234 was inappropriate because it contained flaming. Please be nice to your fellow visitors on Drupal.org, or your account may be blocked.

3. If you can edit an user's account, add any relevant notes for future reference to the 'Notes' field, which is visible only to user administrators.
4. If you know someone to be a troublemaker who has been warned before, block their account.

See also: Abuse of the Contribution Credit system.

Blocking vs deleting users

Deleting users is a very destructive action. It should not be done. If a user is a troublemaker, just block their account (click 'Block' toggle on user's profile). Of course, you should only block users with a good enough reason. Some of the good reasons are:

• Spamming (even once).
• Repetitive flaming.
• Repetitive posting of trash content (test posts, obvious duplicates, inappropriate book pages, …).
• Repetitive abuse of the contribution credit system, including opening up an empty merge request and plagiarized patches/MRs.

Blocked users who request access

If a user requests their account unblocked, and there are no issues filed in the queues, and their profile, nodes or comments don't give any indication of spam or trolling behavior, their account can be unblocked and an issue filed in the site moderators queue documenting this (if one does not exist).

Document Your Actions

When possible, file an issue in the site moderators project with a brief reason why the user was blocked. If you blocked the account, mark the issue 'Fixed' right away. You don't need to open an issue for every spam account blocked, if they are obvious spam accounts without any previous history of valid content.

You can also use 'Notes' field on user account edit page to add any relevant info. The contents of the field are only visible to user administrators.