README

A Moodle local plugin that lets students report problematic posts in mod_forum forums, with configurable auto-moderation (hide posts, suspend users) and a teacher review queue.

Features

• "Report this post" / "Post reported" link injected into every forum post's action menu (mod_forum has no native hook for this, so it's added client-side via a core/modal_save_cancel modal). The link is omitted entirely on a user's own posts, and replaced with an unlinked "Post reported" label on posts they've already reported.
• Configurable report reasons, either site-wide defaults or overridden per course (e.g. "Offensive language", "Overuse of AI").
• Per-forum opt-in — reporting is disabled by default for every forum; a teacher/manager enables it (and may override the site-wide thresholds) from a "Forum care" section embedded directly in the forum's own Edit settings page.
• Site-wide master switch in Site administration, independent of the per-forum opt-in.
• Configurable thresholds:
  • Auto-hide a post once it receives N open reports.
  • Auto-suspend a user's enrolment in a course once their posts receive N open reports in that course.
  • Optional admin-only auto-suspend of a user's account site-wide once their posts receive N open reports across the whole site.
  • Auto-block a user from submitting further reports once N of their past reports have been marked frivolous by a moderator. A blocked user sees no difference in the UI — their report is silently recorded but excluded from every threshold count.
  • Any per-forum threshold can be set to 0 to disable that specific protection for that forum only.
• Teacher review queue (/local/forumcare/report.php), filterable by forum/reporter/reportee, with the post title, forum name, and reporter/reportee names linking to the post, forum, and profile pages respectively. Reportable columns are independently sortable.
• Colour-coded moderator actions: Mark as OK (green), Suspend in course / Suspend site-wide (red), Mark as frivolous / Hide post (yellow), and Undo review (revert a reviewed report back to pending).
• Hidden-post placeholders are styled as Bootstrap info notices, with distinct wording for automatic (threshold-triggered) vs manual (teacher-clicked "Hide post") hides.
• Full GDPR privacy provider (core_privacy).

Requirements

• Moodle 4.5 (2024100700) or later. Tested against Moodle 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 (see .github/workflows/ci.yml).
• mod_forum (bundled with Moodle core).

Installation

1. Copy (or git clone) this plugin into local/forumcare in your Moodle codebase.
2. Visit Site administration → Notifications to run the database install/upgrade.
3. Configure thresholds and the site-wide switch at Site administration → Plugins → Local plugins → Forum care.
4. Add at least one report reason at Site administration → Plugins → Local plugins → Forum care → Report reasons (or per-course, see below).
5. For each forum you want to enable reporting on: open the forum's Edit settings page and expand the Forum care section to enable it (and optionally override thresholds for that forum).

Configuring report reasons per course

By default, every course offers the site-wide default reasons. A teacher or manager can override this for a single course from the Forum care report reasons link in that course's navigation: enable "Override the site-wide default report reasons for this course" and add the course's own list.

Capabilities

Privacy

This plugin stores personal data (who reported what, and why) and implements the full core_privacy API. Since report rows are shared between the reporter, the reportee, and the reviewer, deleting a user's data anonymises that user's own identifying fields on the row rather than deleting the row outright, since other users still need it as moderation history.

Known limitations

• Post deletion is intentionally not implemented by this plugin. A moderator deleting post content should use mod_forum's own existing delete-post flow (requires mod/forum:deleteanypost).
• Manually undoing a review (the "Undo review" action) resets the report back to pending but does not reverse any side effect already taken, e.g. an enrolment suspension — only the report's own status/outcome.

Development

• Code style: Moodle coding standard (local_codechecker / moodle-plugin-ci phpcs).
• JavaScript: amd/src/report.js is ES6 source; run grunt amd from the Moodle root after editing it to regenerate amd/build/report.min.js and its sourcemap.
• Tests: tests/ contains PHPUnit coverage for threshold enforcement, moderation actions, course reason overrides, and the privacy provider.
• CI: see .github/workflows/ci.yml, which runs the full moodle-plugin-ci suite (phplint, phpcs, phpdoc, validate, savepoints, mustache, grunt, phpunit, behat) against Moodle 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2.

License

GPL v3 or later. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.