content classification mods

[electrode]

I've been playing around with a content classification mod. At the moment it sorta works like this.

First of all, users choose what their content threshold level is. This is independent of categories and albums.  There's radio buttons, check boxes or lists added to their user profile (one not all).  Guests have a default content threshold, the lowest. In the simplest form, there may be just two levels. But there's no reason in principle why there couldn't be 3 or more levels. And there's no reason in principle why admin/mods can't assign the threshold on the user's behalf, maybe according to membership status or group.

In my case cpg is setup so that admin/mods approve all uploads, and guests can't upload, but that's not fundamental to the implementation. 

And so extra attributes are also added to the image, specifying it's content classification. Initially the registered user suggests the image classification on the upload form, and then the admin/mod can ratify or override, but once it's set then it can't be changed back by the user, only the admin/mod.  Of course they can still delete the image if they are unhappy with the classification override. In my implementation, the user can raise the classification but not lower it. Again there's radio buttons, check boxes, or lists added to the image upload and edit forms.

Then all the viewer scripts filter the images (& thumbnails) according to the user threshold, which then display all images classified (subject to normal criteria) below or equal to the threshold. The album/group filter thing still works as before. This is just another level of filtering.  The labels for the threshold setting and image classification are in the language file now, although initially I had them in the settings.

While the user's threshold setting is independent at the moment, there's probably no reason why it couldn't be tied to groups, just that there's no implicit ordering of the groups. You could do it by group number, but then that would force the admin to enter the groups in a specific order according to threshold. You could add an attribute to the groups with the threshold level, and that would automatically assign to each user in that group.  More complexity but do-able.

Anyway, the whole purpose of this hack is to override the "who can view" of a particular image, irrespective of what category or group the image is in, giving some control to the admin/mods or site policies on a image by image basis. 

The next step for me is I might even take out the "who can view" thingy from the modify album or reduce it to just everyone, me, or me & my buddies, and get rid of visibilty of the groups by the user.

This hack at the moment is loaded on top of the modpac and a number of other mods, so its not in a distributable form. And I'm not quite finished with it yet, though it seems to work ok and not let anything by.  I suppose will be able to extract the mods at some point and do a vanilla version and a version which sits on a modpac. Although not as extensive as the modpac, it does change a lot of scripts and two tables.

But I'm interested to hear of suggestions on how or if this hack could meet the bulk of your requirements, and I'll see if its worth the trouble of releasing and supporting it. Also is there anything in the next edition which would make this redundant?

[TheTazZ]

If you're still out there, please do release this mod - this is exactly what i'm currently looking for.