Puzzeling... Multiple auto generated Moderators

[NgtCrwlr]

Why am I seeing multiple (!Auto-generated moderator Please leave! NgtCrwlr) in control panel (User Group and Permissions)?

Also, something seems out of sync with control panel (Forums Modify) and (Forums Moderators) if Moderator settings are changed in one they wipe out the settings in the other.

At one point I tried to remove a second moderator from one forum using (Forums Modify) I clicked remove and it removed that moderator from all forums even though I had clicked remove for a specific forum.

Anyone have a clue of what's going on? Especially with the multiple auto generated mod's.

Larry "NgtCrwlr" Mingus
http://www.makeitsimple.com
http://www.mis-forums.com

[Craig A]

I also have multiple auto generated mods. They seem to be related to the import from UBB and the fact that vB works differently - rather than moderators/administrators, we have those pesky usergroups. When a user is both an admin and a mod with UBB, this seems to confuse vB and it creates two auto generated wotsits. I ignored the please delete thing and deleted one record for each of our four mods which worked fine, apart from one. This one removed moderator rights from that particular user. When I added them back, the second group reapperared. Weird! Anyway, John has promised to rethink the whol usergroup idea soon, so hopefully it'll be a whole lot easier to understand :)

[bira]

I think the usergroups are simply a fantastic idea though somewhat badly implemented.

The idea of associating users to various groups is a very good one - it allows leverage of many options, such as emailing only members of one specific usergroups, such as opening a forum only for a certain usergroup, and much much more.

However, getting the hang of them - for me - was a bit hard. Like others here, I had to learn the hard way that if you remove something that appears twice, you can find yourself locked out of the control panel :)


My advice: leave the option to generate usergroup, but then separate the moderators from that option -- those two really cause the most problems.

Also - IMPERATIVE for user-friendliness - allow us bb admins to assign a user with more than one usergroup. IE, user "bira" can be a member of the "MySQL ignorants" usergroup, the "PHP programers wanabes" usergroup, and the "motor racing forums vb owners" usergroup :):)

In any case, the process should simply be to add a usergroup, determine its permissions etc' and then for each user to be able to assign anywhere from one (registered user, like now) to 5 usergroups for that matter.

But whatever you do - do not involve confusing autogenerated singular moderator usergroups that simply trick us and serve little purpose in their current format, if to be pefectly honest :)

[Craig A]

What bira said :D

Basically all we need is an option to allow a single user to be a member of two user groups. ie listed as a moderator, but be an admin too. At the moment, we have to set them as a mod, then go through each of the auto generated thingies, adding extra permissions, etc. It should be easier than this.

[werehere]

Basically all we need is an option to allow a single user to be a member of two user groups. ie listed as a moderator, but be an admin too.

I really want the mod/admin option to work as well. I have never had any of the usergroup options being difficult at all, just play with them for a few minutes and you will get the hang of it. But the actuall errors have to be fixed obviously. :)

[Craig A]

No, the functionality is there (like MS-DOS) but it needs an easy to use wrapper around it (like Windows) for those who are new to it or don't have the tech know how to learn.

I personally am on top of things for the moment, but I do think that the process is overly complicated. Keep the functionality there for 'power users' and for tinkering with the initial setup, but let's have some simple to use wrapper too please.

[NgtCrwlr]

I am still not clear on what I should do at this point. Craig I agree that this needs to have a two way approach. One for the basics and one for advanced. I don't consider myself the average user and I still don't have a grip on it.

If I understand this correctly I cannot have myself as Admin AND Moderator at the same time? The problem is I don't have extra staff right now and have to handle both positions myself.

What about having *more* than one Admin, is this possible? Or should I setup a new user called Co-Administrator, and give that user all privileges?

This really sucks because I am sure that the re-install that I had to do last weekend was do to the moderator/admin confusion. Now I'm worried that I could get locked out of the control panel again by trying to clean up the current mess. All I did the last time was remove all moderators and bang I was logged out and couldn't get back in. dOh! I surly don't want to go through another re-install/import again!

At this point I have three auto generated mod's:
!Auto-generated moderator Please leave! NgtCrwlr
!Auto-generated moderator Please leave! NgtCrwlr
!Auto-generated moderator Please leave! NgtCrwlr1

NgtCrwlr1 was set to Admin but now shows up in the registered group. NgtCrwlr was in the Admin group and now shows up in the !Auto-generated group *again*!

There doesn't seem to be any wild card setting available to show only Admin's. Also, what is the (User Status
Use this to override the default 'ladder' of user status titles) I have Administrator in both fields?

Any help on this bugger will be greatly appreciated.

[werehere]

Yes you could have multiple admins, and moderate with another user, also you can set a moderator that can have access to the control panel and then give that user a custom title of "administrator" (or whatever) and they can do all that an admin can do once you check "can access control panel" for them. You could think about doing that without any problem at all for the time being, and you would be essentially an administrator without actually being in that user group.

That is a bug I hope will get worked out soon as well, but there are workarounds.

Also, keep in mind that you are not actually locked out of the control panel for good. Use the search, because there are php scripts, and/or MySQL queries for that specific purpose posted on this forum.:)

[NgtCrwlr]

Thanks werehere, I'll just leave everything the way it is until I read about a formal fix.

On the getting locked out of control panel... it was a bit more serious for me. I did search... I tried everything I could find, and nothing would worked, I tried logging out of the demo, clearing cookies ( I don't know how many times), and using getadmin.php. After burning up several hours trying everything I said hell with it and re-installed, frustrating to say the least. :)

All's well that end's well, fortunately for me the re-install was relatively easy because I had made a backup copy of each template. Which reminds me to post a suggestion in the proper forum about adding a mass template export and import function. Maybe this is already there and I haven't found it yet.

I'm sure in a few months most of these aggravating things will be worked out. Overall I'm thrilled with vB.

[werehere]

I'm sure in a few months most of these aggravating things will be worked out. Overall I'm thrilled with vB.

I totally agree with you there :)

[bira]

werehere,

In this day and age, an application must be user-friendly. The KISS approach (Keep It Simple Stupid) must apply to every aspect of vBulletin if it is to succeed and bite off a significant chunck of the webmastering market.

From what I've experienced so far with vB, the administration part has much to be desired. Telling users "play with it, you'll get the hang of it eventually" is probably the worst marketing mistake you can make and not all users will be bothered to come over here and become Senior Members (I am! :)) to finally get a grip of every aspect of the BB.

vBulletin prides itself in being a suitable platform for medium to large websites. In such websites, the webmasters are pretty busy people. I know for myself that I wasted too many hours on learning through mistakes on how to deal various aspects of the vB admins. And while I didn't really suffer, I can assure you that there would be others in my place who would throw vB to hell and crawl back to a more known and familiar application.

Right now vBulletin operates very much within a safe and secure territory -- those who've already bought it, myself included, are taking a chance on this and are the exception to the marketing rule - and not the rule. There are literally hundreds of thousands of potential buyers there, and vB right now is far from appealling to the average denomiator of those buyers, mainly because of the admin side.

More specificly on the auto-generated moderators:

Crwlr: the simplest way (if you can call it that) that you can set up a moderator who is also an admin, is to do the following:

1) put that user as moderator in the forums "moderators" option in the control panel.

2) go to user groups & permissions and click on "modify". Where your moderator (yourself or someone else) appears as "!Auto-generated moderator Please leave! USERNAME" click on "edit" and there change his/her "User Status" to say Administrator, and change the rest of the settings to reflect what you allow him\her to do. If it's yourself - the BB owner -- simply change the settings to allow all.

3) I'm not sure if this is also necessary (don't remember) - but you might also want to go to Users, find that specific user, and change his\her "User Title"

That's it. Now go grab a beer -- you've worked hard and you deserve it ;)

[Edited by bira on 06-14-2000 at 06:05 AM]

[werehere]

bira,

I completely agree that it should be easy, but I was just stating that I had not personaly found it so hard to figure out. While at the same time, with some of these bugs it makes it much more confusing to work your way around the usergroups. :)

[John]

Thanks for the ideas and opinions guys. These have been read and taken on board. As you may know, usergroups are getting revamped for the next big version.

Just a small query on your idea of having a user in multiple groups - what happens if the two groups specify contratictory options? eg. in one group, I can post to forum x and in the other I cannot post to forum x.

John

[bira]

John, the "cannot" should always precede the "can". Basic rule of logic :)

Look, I don't know all the answers - if I did, I'd be writing the damn thing myself! :) - but I do know that the current system isn't friendly and a source of much agony to some (myself among them. I dare not come near that part of the control panel - how approriate that it's at the bottom! :) :))

By the way, one way of solving your dilemma of possible clash in permissions, is to build the usergroup only on checkboxes. Ie, you say what a user group can do, not what it can't. Basically, a user begins by not having any permissions. And the top of the ladder is the admin, how has all permissions.

By assigning a usergroup to a user I don't necessarily change his permissions level. Sometimes it's just a matter of being able to have a few mailing lists. Sometimes it defines users by the forum they "belong" to. That doesn't go to say they're not allowed to go to other forums.

And sometimes a certain usergroup is granted access to a certain forum. Other usergroups can't access that forum not because it says "no" for their settings, but because it doesn't say "yes". It may sound like semantics, but it's not.

If I belong to group A that says "do not allow access to forum x" and to a group B that says "allow access to forum y" - then you have a contradiction. But if group A has nothing in the settings with relations to forum x, and group B is only allowed access there, then I won't have a problem accessing forum x, because I belong to group B and it does not change anything that I belong to group A. My accessing the forum or not is inherited by the fact that group B has permissions, not by the fact that group A doesn't.

Sheesh, that's complicated to explain. I hope you follow my meaning, though. It's been years since my maths days :)