In a support discussion regarding the automatic “New user typed too fast” silence, user haydenjames inquired about the duration of this silence and how to configure it, ideally for 24 hours. User Bas clarified that silences are permanent until a moderator manually unsilences the user via the review queue. User chapoi noted the code defaults to a 1000-year duration and suggested a feature request for a configurable time limit, as no UI option currently exists for this specific scenario chapoi.
The thread also addressed an issue where the admin, haydenjames, was not receiving notifications despite the Notify mods when user silenced setting being enabled. User Moin suggested checking site settings and the moderator group assignment, while user Rubi reported similar random notification failures in the Review Queue. Finally, Moin proposed using Data Explorer and Automation to generate reports or PMs when users are silenced, as a workaround for the inconsistent native notification system.
Where can I find how long this automatic silence lasts or where that duration is configured?
I’ve checked:
Admin → Settings → Trust Levels
Admin → Settings → Posting
Rate limit and new user settings
I don’t see an explicit silence duration setting tied to this behavior, and the UI doesn’t show an expiry time for the silence.
Is it permanent? For new users, I would like to be able to set this for 24 hours. So far, most spam accounts that are silenced don’t return to try again. But real users will return. Sometimes they are silenced for pasting their first message.
They are silenced until they are unsilenced by the manual actions of a moderator.
These moderators will be warned by a flag, which will be in the review queue (available at /review). Here’s a redacted screenshot of one from Meta earlier today:
It is a bit odd that we have this code, which defaults to a 1000 years (lol), but also seemed to have had the ability to set a custom configuration though
I don’t think you can atm. At least definitely not via UI. It could be an oversight or just something we have never implemented.
We do have the duration-setting for silencing in chat, which was added more recently, so I think this is a good candidate to make a feature request for
I just wanted to make sure that no message is actually sent. It could also be that no one notices because the notification level of the moderator inbox is set so that it causes little (in this case, perhaps too little) noise.
I think it could work to use data-explorer and automation to send a message or post in a topic in the staff category when @system silences a user.
Something like:
SELECT target_user_id, details, updated_at
FROM user_histories
WHERE action = 30
AND acting_user_id = -1
AND updated_at >= NOW() - INTERVAL '1 hour'
And a “Schedule a PM with Data Explorer results” or a “Schedule a post in a topic with Data Explorer results” automation that runs every hour
).