Disable user account

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The discussion revolves around the topic of “Disable user account”. probus suggests that admins need a way to mark user accounts as disabled while keeping their posts intact. This is because suspending a user indefinitely can have negative connotations and deactivating an account breaks the user page.

Mittineague questions the need for a separate “disable” feature, suggesting that users can simply stop participating and turn off notifications. However, probus counters that some users want to explicitly quit and that marking their account as disabled benefits others who may try to interact with them.

Mittineague proposes creating a custom “inactive” badge to indicate a user’s status. Meanwhile, riking suggests using a long suspension with a reason indicating the user voluntarily left the forum.

codinghorror presents three options: anonymizing the account, blocking the user, or invalidating their email. However, Bluer points out the need for temporary banning or preventing access, to which codinghorror responds by recommending the use of suspensions.

1

What should the admins do when a user wants to disable his account? Meaning, have nothing to do with the forum any more but keep their posts in place.

Suspending the user indefinitely gets weird associations. Deactivating would be better, but this breaks the user page completely and doesn’t give any hint to other users that this one has stopped participating. Also, don’t unactivated accounts get deleted periodically now? What happens if they have posts?

Should there be a way to disable user accounts so that the posts remain, but the account gets clearly marked as disabled? For example their username gets grey like trust level 0 and the profile page gets a notification like when suspended but less aggressively.

Or could the deactivation be bettered to support users with history on the forum?

Which setting(s) would prevent Discourse from emailing an old user?
2

If they have posts, I’d assume theur account is not unactivated.

If they want to no longer participate, can’t they just no longer participate?
eg. turn off notifications, emails, etc, and never return.

3

You can deactivate accounts even when they have posts.

Yes, they can. But some like to explicitly quit. And it’s beneficial that when they do, others get to see is as well so you don’t mention, reply or private message them hoping for a reply.

edit. and you don’t have to worry about stolen passwords or anything else regarding the site any more.

4

I was referring to

don’t unactivated accounts get deleted periodically now?

Maybe you could create a custom badge like “inactive” and “award” it to them and assign that as their “title”?

5

I think a long suspension with the reason “User voluntarily left the forum” should work fine.

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6

You have two, maybe three, options here

  1. Anonymize account – assumes user is sure they never want to come back and removes their name from the account.

  2. Block – user can still log in but cannot post

  3. Invalidate email – user can return if they re validate their email.

7

So there is no way to temporarily ban / prevent access for user? My site is private so this functionality is pretty important.

8

Yes, use suspensions as previously mentioned.

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