Report Spam form

[Edward Betts]

We have authors contact us with problems about their author page. They almost never include the URL of the page. Fixing these kind of problems would be easier and quicker if we had a "report a problem with this author" link at the bottom of each author page. This link would take the user to a form with fields for a description of the problem, their name and e-mail address. It would be a bit like filing a bug report.

At first we could just put the details in an e-mail. Later we could use some request tracking software.

[George (george-archive)]

We should have a "Report A Problem" link in the footer of every page.

Ideally, it would nab the link of the page where people clicked it, offer a text field for them to tell us what's up, and bundle it up into a small back-end system we build to handle and track all user emails. But yes, in the first instance an email to us would suffice.

[George (george-archive)]

This can be a simple form.

The form should note fields for:
* The user who sent it
* The URL of the page they were looking at
* A comment box
* (hidden) date/time
* user's email address, if logged in

If the user is logged in, we should connect this spam report to their user account. A spam report list should be shown on the new patron admin page: http://home.us.archive.org/~georgeo/upstream/admin-patrons-patron.html

If the user is not logged in, we should show a note that says "We are unable to respond to you about this because we don't know who you are. If you _open an Open Library account_, we can connect any reports you send in to your account, which makes it possible to get back to you." (or something).

When the user submits the report, it should be emailed to info@, and be formatted like this:

Subject: Spam Report from {username OR IP}
From: [user's email address, if we know it]

Date/Time: [data]
Page: [clickable URL]
Comment: [comment]

[George (george-archive)]

I've put a mock on Upstream. Lance - can you please hook up?

Even if it's just a mailto: info@ with those few fields included that will do for the first instance.

[George (george-archive)]

See what you think, Edward. If you can do the "grand plan" that would be really great.

[Lance Arthur (lance-arthur)]

I went looking around on archive.org to find an email form, but there are none. All email links are simply links. This leads me to believe that no cgi-email or other thing is on the server. As reported earlier, the old method of using action="mailto:etc." no longer works in browsers, they insist on opening up your email client so any information you previously entered is useless. We also want to capture the page that the user linked on to report.

[George (george-archive)]

Cool - so, what do you suggest we do?

[George (george-archive)]

Excellent. Edward has whipped up a little form that does version 1 of the job. I've told Mary that it's done, and tested the flow.

I'll snip off fixthis from the footer icon so we can stop worrying about it.

[George (george-archive)]

Anand - just sending to you to refine the form when you can get to it. Low priority.

[George (george-archive)]

Seems to work for now. Would be good to make it more useable for staff asap.

[George (george-archive)]

Edward - please make it so the email is sent from the person's email address, so it's easy for Mary to reply quickly, without cut and pasting the email address.

Also, I believe Anand said he was going to add the user agent (silently) to the bottom of the email, but I haven't seen that yet.

And! Can you please snip the string "Spam Report" out of the email content, or, direct me to the mail content's template?

[Anand Chitipothu (anandology)]

> Edward - please make it so the email is sent from the person's email
> address, so it's easy for Mary to reply quickly, without cut and
> pasting
> the email address.

It looks like we are not vaidating email address. We need to validate
the email address before we can do this.

> Also, I believe Anand said he was going to add the user agent
> (silently)
> to the bottom of the email, but I haven't seen that yet.
>
> And! Can you please snip the string "Spam Report" out of the email
> content, or, direct me to the mail content's template?

Done both of them. Will go live in next code deploy!

[George (george-archive)]

"It looks like we are not vaidating email address."

What do you mean? We should have validated email addresses for signed-in people - do you mean that doesn't work?

Or, are you just referring to the form? How soon can you do this? The current set-up is very cumbersome for Mary, and there is much more traffic to the help form now that people can see the big icon at the bottom :)

Let's see if we can make it easier for her this week.

Ideally, we should make a web UI for answering help mail, that connects enquiries with accounts.

[Edward Betts (edwardbetts)]

I've changed the form to use the e-mail address of the submitter as the from address.

[Anand Chitipothu (anandology)]

On 12-May-10, at 3:10 AM, Edward Betts wrote:

> I've changed the form to use the e-mail address of the submitter as
> the
> from address.

We are not validating the email. So If the user enters invalid email,
that will result in 500 error.

[Edward Betts (edwardbetts)]

On 12/05/10 09:42, Anand Chitipothu wrote:
>
> On 12-May-10, at 3:10 AM, Edward Betts wrote:
>
>> I've changed the form to use the e-mail address of the submitter as
>> the
>> from address.
>
> We are not validating the email. So If the user enters invalid email,
> that will result in 500 error.

There isn't any way for Mary to reply to somebody with an invalid
address, so it isn't a big loss if they can't contact us. Maybe we can
catch the exception that causes the 500 error and show the submitter the
same form with an error message telling them to correct their e-mail
address.

[George (george-archive)]

Version 1 is live. Mary and I are working on a spec for an improved Customer Support system.