Remove 'Edit' Capability for forum accounts flagged for moderation

[Ipstenu]

In reviewing some of the more recent issues with user harassment and abuse, one of the tactics abusers have engaged in is editing a post to disguise their actions.

That is, they'll post something harmful, make sure it was emailed out, and then edit their post. We mitigate this, somewhat, with flagging users for moderation. This prevents @-messages and emails from being sent.

However from this, a new trend of abusive commenting has come to light. That is, people post a seemingly innocuous message, get it approved, and then edit it to be vile. This was used by a recent company banned from plugin hosting. They would actually triple edit.

In order to prevent this behaviour, and for the protection of users, I propose we alter the ability to edit a post on the forums. In addition to not permitting edits after 60 minutes have passed, I recommend we also prohibit the editing of posts if an account is on moderation watch.

Doing this would prevent them from abusing and harassing the community under the guise that because their post was approve, the moderation team condoned their actions.

[dd32]

One side effect of this would be flagging the fact they've been modwatched by the fact they can no longer edit comments, as AFAIK we don't show that status anywhere else?

Is that a concern here at all? I'm not against making it clear they've been limited, but it might cause such people to bounce between new non-watched accounts?

[Ipstenu]

IIRC they get alerted when they post that their post is held for moderation, so they already know that.

[dd32]

Replying to Ipstenu:

so they already know that.

Ah IIRC you're correct indeed. In that case, removing edit from such accounts gets a firm +1 from me.

[dd32]

In 8041:

Support Forums: Moderation: Block users who are on modwatch from editing their threads/replies.

Fixes #4035.

[dd32]

Blocked.

There's also the option that we could allow them to edit their topics/replies *before* it's approved by a moderator, so minor corrections could be made.

However, I didn't implement it like that and instead removed the capability entirely, the primary reason was if you're on the edit screen and loose the capability, it causes an endless redirect that I couldn't figure out the source of.. so editing a post and having a moderator approve the previous variant of it would cause a deluge of requests to occur.

[dd32]

In 8117:

Support Forums: User Moderation: Allow modwatched users to edit posts, prior to the topic/reply being approved.

This is a follow up to #4035 where posting a new topic would result in a 404 page rather than the pending thread, simply allowing edits prior to approval seems the easiest solution.
Modwatched users are still unable to edit approved topics/replies as per #4035.

See #4035.
Fixes #4087.