The mod tools include a way to delete an ability, with the warning that it'll come back on a recalculation if the user still qualifies. This implies that you could nuke something temporarily, and if nothing else happens, the next recalc would restore it. And if you hit the recalc button in the mod tools, it does come back.
The recalc script, on the other hand, won't bring it back until there is another triggering event -- a change in post score, edit count, or flag count, depending on the ability. The recalc script operates from a queue of such events, because checking every user on every script run would be onerous. This behavior confused me as a moderator, though, because it seemed like I was revoking an ability more permanently than the UI led me to believe.
We should make the behavior and the UI guidance agree, by doing one of:
- add the user/ability into the queue upon manual deletion (next script run will bring it back), or
- update the warning text, which currently says: "This will remove the ability but it will come back when the abilities are recalculated, as long as the requirements are still met."
I lean toward the latter. I'm only aware of one real case of this so far and I think we led the user to believe that it would be like it says in the warning in the mod tools. Ability deletions are rare and probably shouldn't bounce right back in six hours.
The mod tools include a way to delete an ability, with the warning that it'll come back on a recalculation if the user still qualifies. This implies that you could nuke something temporarily, and if nothing else happens, the next recalc would restore it. And if you hit the recalc button in the mod tools, it does come back.
The recalc script, on the other hand, won't bring it back until there is another triggering event -- a change in post score, edit count, or flag count, depending on the ability. The recalc script operates from a queue of such events, because checking every user on every script run would be onerous. This behavior confused me as a moderator, though, because it seemed like I was revoking an ability more permanently than the UI led me to believe.
We should make the behavior and the UI guidance agree, by doing one of:
I lean toward the latter. I'm only aware of one real case of this so far and I think we led the user to believe that it would be like it says in the warning in the mod tools. Ability deletions are rare and probably shouldn't bounce right back in six hours.