Dealing with seemingly mentally ill user who writes manifesto type posts

Community
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Referencing this topic (Banned users re-signing up through proxy IPs) and others I read while on my mobile last night: I’m gathering that the most that can (or should) be done is to keep moderating their content and hope that in time they wear down and just go away (or comply) on their own?

Here’s my planned message to this user:

Thanks for chiming in and for the contributions you’ve made here. Glad to hear some of the stuff here has been helpful to you.

But I need to clarify that this isn’t a venting forum. While we welcome discussion and feedback, back-and-forth about moderation decisions won’t be tolerated. Our policies, including post merging and editing limits, are in place to keep things structured and useful for everyone. These apply everywhere in the community.

If you choose to step away, that’s your choice and you’re always welcome back under the same rules as everyone else. Either way, good luck.

Previously, they left for 3 weeks then came back yesterday with long rants about not being able to edit their posts and about posts being merged (3 bumps of replying to self)

Any admins with advice on the best ways to handle problematic users like this? thanks

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We had some content in our forum that we didn’t want disrupting the main discussions, but we also didn’t want to silence users completely. So we created a “back-room” category where posts could be moved. Discussions could still continue there, but the topics wouldn’t appear on the latest posts list.

It seems to depend on the users’ motivation, but they can just lose interest when their venting doesn’t affect the main conversations.

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I really like this idea! Going to work on this now.

I just need to set search priority to ignore, correct?

The image displays settings options under "Search Priority," including options to ignore a category, award badges, allow featured links, navigate to the first post, make new topics wikis by default, and allow unlimited editor edits on the first post. (Captioned by AI)
The image displays settings options under "Search Priority," including options to ignore a category, award badges, allow featured links, navigate to the first post, make new topics wikis by default, and allow unlimited editor edits on the first post. (Captioned by AI)566×282 9.26 KB

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We had used the GitHub - communiteq/discourse-suppress-category-from-latest plugin. But I guess you can also look into the muted site settings and either mute by category or by tag:

This image shows configuration options for filtering categories and tags in forums, such as default categories muted or normal and setting when all categories should be muted by default. (Captioned by AI)
This image shows configuration options for filtering categories and tags in forums, such as default categories muted or normal and setting when all categories should be muted by default. (Captioned by AI)1175×443 22.9 KB

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So this would be correct, yes?

The image shows a settings menu for "Back Room" in a content management system, with options to customize access and visibility settings for the "trust_level_0" and "staff" groups. (Captioned by AI)
The image shows a settings menu for "Back Room" in a content management system, with options to customize access and visibility settings for the "trust_level_0" and "staff" groups. (Captioned by AI)1231×521 27.9 KB

Edit (since usually these issues are just with TL0 and TL1 members):

The image shows a security permissions matrix indicating that staff, trust_level_0, and trust_level_1 all have the ability to "See," "Reply," and "Create" content, except for being able to "Delete." (Captioned by AI)
The image shows a security permissions matrix indicating that staff, trust_level_0, and trust_level_1 all have the ability to "See," "Reply," and "Create" content, except for being able to "Delete." (Captioned by AI)544×231 9.27 KB

Edit: This works out nicely. The moderator also prefer this approach.

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FWIW I think your proposed communication to the member in your OP is clear and well written. :slight_smile:

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