Sometimes when I impersonate someone (albeit, not very often) I forget and keep trying to do admin type things and then realize I’m in someone elses account.
Another downside of the current process is that you have to click on the users avatar. I was impersonating a users that had 5 new notifications. When I clicked his profile, so I could log out of his account, it marks those notifications as read and no longer shows the (5) badge showing he has new notifications. How sad for him, when he returns! Hopefully he got some email notifications that will pull him back in!
Another community that I built and currently manage, is on the Higher Logic platform. I can’t tell you how much more I enjoy using Discourse than Higher Logic. But, now that I have that out of the way, I will say that I do like their method of impersonating users…
There’s a bar at the top of the screen, providing a constant visual reminder that you’re impersonating and a button to STOP, as well as a little orphan button at the bottom of the screen allowing you to STOP.
I don’t think they need both buttons. Top of the screen is sufficient.
I love @John_Lehmann’s suggestion with a more bold/obtrusive bar that stands out so you remember to get out of the user account before posting and doing other stuffs.
Not critical by any means.
I just came to meta, to see if there was a plugin for this, or something.
Just ended up needing this today. I use the impersonate feature to post category guidelines, or other pinned topics or replies in them under the @system account. What I currently do is post them under mine, then change ownership to @system, but what if someone has the topic set to watching, then they would see that it was me. I’m not necessarily trying to be anonymous when posting these, although, I just don’t want those posts under my name. I could make an alt whose purpose is to post these, although I would have to log in from a private window each time, which is bad ux.
