Replace Sorting by E-mail with Sorting by Date Registered

Feature Requests
1

Hello,

I am bringing again this issue, because I believe it will improve the functionality of OJS if implemented.
Currently, in OJS 2.4.8.1 when the Journal Manager is checking the User Enrollment, there is a table of All Enrolled Users where Username, Name, E-mail and Action are displayed. Sorting is allowed by Username, Name and E-mail.

I would like to request that E-mail sorting is replaced with Date registered for the following reason:

  1. Journals are victimized by registration of bots or other fake people with the intention to exploit the OJS. If the Jounal Manager has an easy sorting by Date Registered, it is possible to check only the new users registered after a certain date to take action - Disable and Remove them from the journal.
  2. The E-mail sorting is absolutely useless - who will know the e-mail of the registered users, who may register with any mail? If Jounal manager wants to find a person, then the Sorting by Last Name as it is available is perfectly fine way to find a person. The only reason that is in favor of having the E-mail displayed in this Table (Username, Name, E-mail, Action) is to allow sending e-mail to user by clicking on the e-mail icon. However, with what I am proposing there is no fundamental difficulty introduced - if the Journal Manager really wants to send an e-mail to user, it is quite fast to click on the user name, and from newly opened user Profile to click the e-mail icon for sending e-mail to that user.

In Summary, changing sending e-mail from 1 click away to 2 clicks away (if e-mail is replaced with Date registered column) will provide easy acces to Journal manager to disable newly registered fake and exploitative users.

To keep the 1 click away e-mail icon available, it is possible to keep only the icon in a single narrow column without displaying the e-mail which currently is also half-hidden by ellipsis (…) and is the widest column in User table.

It will be great if my request is reflected in a new updated version of OJS. I consider my proposal as a Security Update, which will allow Journal Managers to combat malicious user registration more effectively.

Below is illustration of the requested change: namely Change E-mail column to Date registered, If needed keep E-mail as very narrow colum with icon only without e-mail displayed as text: the e-mail text is below ellipsis anyway and useless for Journal Managers.

2

Hi @dankomed,

What version of OJS are you using? (Please include this in your posts.)

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Dear Alec,
I am using Open Journal Systems 2.4.8.1. I have edited my original post.

4

Hi @dankomed,

Have you enabled CAPTCHA testing upon registration? If you’re finding yourself dealing with frequent spam registrations, consider enabling that feature.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

YES, CAPTCHA is turned on and is properly working on the OJS. I do not see what the captcha has to do with my request for enabling the Journal manager to sort users by date registered.

6

You’ve phrased this feature request as a means of addressing “registration of bots or other fake people”. We’ve noted that CAPTCHA (specifically reCAPTCHA) is an existing tool in the product which helps with that.

In parallel threads, @asmecher notes that this feature could be considered for 3.x:

and I note the path toward implementing this in 2.x:

You are correct that the value of sorting by registration date is probably more useful than the value of sorting users by email, but given the focus on 3.x, this is an unlikely candidate for enhancement in 2.x by PKP. It would always be a welcome pull request from the community.