Watched words for staff members too

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Discussion: Watched words for staff members too.

Ivan_Rapekas wants to restrict staff members from using certain phrases while posting, but the Watched Words feature only works for non-staff. sam suggests a custom plugin is needed to achieve this. However, Ivan_Rapekas proposes an alternative solution of treating staff as normal users with a temporary ‘sudo’ button to grant moderator or admin privileges when necessary.

Meanwhile, pfaffman is looking for a way to grant a group immunity to Watched Words without making them staff. He explores modifying the watched_word.rb file to bypass the word filtering for a specific group. chrismalone expresses interest in finding a solution for their own community.

1

Hi,

Is there any way to check staff for inappropriate words during posting? I tried Watched Words option, but it works only for non-staff. As I understand, it works as designed.

I would like to avoid staff members use some phrases, for instance, they need to check themselves the URL published (external must be):
NOT OK: The issue has been added: https://internal.domain.com/B-123
OK: The issue has been added: https://external.domain.com/B-123

How to achieve this?

2

I think you would need a custom plugin to place this kind of restriction on staff. They get a free pass with watched words.

3

Thank you, @sam!

The best solution I think is to work staff as normal users but with a sudo button to be able temporary granted as moderators or admins when they need :slight_smile:.

Reasons: 1) most of the time staff does the same things like normal users, 2) staff should understand what options of the forum regular users can use - sometimes staff members have the second user profile, but I don’t like this.

4

I’m looking for a way to give a group immunity to watched words without making them staff.

I was thinking that I might

  1. replace the self.word with null or spaces in discourse/app/models/watched_word.rb at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub
  2. Make create_or_update_word return immediately if the user is member of the group (discourse/app/models/watched_word.rb at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub)

Does either of those seem like a reasonable way to allow a group to be immune to watched words?

5

I could use this also on a new community I’m building. I’ll definitely watch for a solution here.