A mechanism to silence group @mentions

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Grayden_Shand proposes a feature to mute notifications from specific group @mentions. The user describes a scenario where they are forced to remain in a group to access private categories but are overwhelmed by frivolous group mentions. They suggest adding a “Groups” section to the Notifications preferences, citing existing precedents for watching levels and individual user muting.

sam supports the philosophy of giving users total control over notification volume, noting the challenge of balancing granularity with usability. They question whether Discourse has outgrown its ad-hoc notification controls and should instead offer a more consistent, centralized solution with higher fidelity.

one1 highlights a specific use case where community members require moderator-like access without actual staff privileges. Currently, these users can mute the @moderators mailbox but cannot mute direct mentions, making the proposed feature a perfect solution for their needs.

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Imagine a scenario where you’re in a group that allows you to access some private category in a Discourse site.

The group allows all group members to @mention the group.

Some other users in the group are using this privilege a bit too frivolously, and as a result you are receiving a deluge of notifications.

You can’t leave the group, as you wish to retain access to the private category associated with it. However, you currently have no other recourse to silence the notifications from these group @mentions.

I propose that there ought to be a mechanism to allow users to mute notifications from a particular group. I believe there is precedent to support this feature, as you are currently able to adjust your “Watching level” on a group-by-group basis for group messages. And, you currently have the ability to “mute” individual users.

Perhaps a “Groups” section ought to be added to the “Notifications” preferences page.

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Philosophically I love the idea of letting users be in total control around the notification volume they get.

There is a balancing act, between giving 100 toggles (disable likes from Jane but allow everything else) and giving the right toggles.

I do wonder where we see this fitting. @awesomerobot I wonder if we have outgrown the ad-hoc way we allow people to control what they are notified about and should offer a central / consistent story here with more fidelity.

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Our community needs to have a small group of people to have moderator access, but they aren’t in fact doing moderation. (there are only two ways to be staff, and we don’t want them to be admins) They can mute the @moderators mailbox, but they can’t mute the mentions. This would be a perfect solution to our problem.