Locking at Trust Level 0

Product Support
,
4

I ended up creating a workaround using a couple different tools (my coding is not strong enough to build a custom plugin!). It tested fine and works.

  1. created a new group, restricted-users
  2. created a custom wizard form, restricted to the moderators group
  3. created a new category only viewable to mods, restricted-users-admin and replaced the composer with the custom wizard form.
  4. when a user should have their posting ability limited, a mod fills out the custom wizard form. The form asks which user should be added to the group, and what date they should be removed.
  5. submitting the form creates a new topic in restricted-users-admin
  6. created a webhook for this category to send any new topic created.
  7. when the webhook is received, first check if the user is already in the group, and create a post reply with that info if so. If the user is not in the group, add them to the group, then wait until the given end date/time, then remove them from the group.
  8. created a webhook for any posts by users in the restricted-users group.
  9. when the restricted user posts and the webhook is sent, make an api call to determine how many posts the user has made that day (used same day instead of a 24 hr period, figured it was just easier to match the date I guess). I filtered out PMs here.
  10. if it’s the next to last post the user has available, the API sends the user a PM letting them know they’re approaching their limit and have one more post today. As a proof of concept I set the limit at 5 posts, so this sends a PM after the user’s 4th post.
  11. if it’s their last post, the API silences the user for 24 hours.
  12. When the user is removed from the restricted-users group, the API sends a post reply to the original topic in the restricted-users-admin category.

This is edge case territory for us - this is a “next-to-last resort” kind of thing, after a lot of communication and moderators working with the user. I don’t anticipate we will have the kind of traffic on this that it becomes burdensome, this is a teeny teeny tiny number of users. We are a membership organization and our Discourse forum serves as a repository for all kinds of resources, so members ought to be able to access it. Hence, we need to come up with different solutions rather than suspending.