This guide introduces the role of a moderator in a Discourse forum, explaining how to welcome new users, recognize helpful contributors, and communicate effectively with your moderation team. It covers the foundational aspects of community stewardship before diving into specific moderation tools.
Required user level: Moderator
So you’re a moderator on a Discourse forum — congratulations! As a forum moderator, it’s your role to help oversee the forum, ensuring that users and content align with your Terms of Service, FAQ, and other published rules. Discourse comes with numerous tools to help you accomplish this.
Discourse moderation guide series:
- Part 1: Getting Started (this guide)
- Part 2: Managing Users
- Part 3: Managing Content
This guide covers the foundational aspects of being a moderator:
- Welcoming new users and fostering a friendly environment.
- Recognizing and encouraging helpful community members.
- Understanding the trust level system and its privileges.
- Communicating effectively with your moderation team via staff categories, lounges, and whispers.
Welcoming New Users
Part of keeping a community friendly and helping it grow involves being an example to others. When you notice a new user on the site (as indicated by a post notice), say hi and welcome them to the site. Even if you have nothing else to say, that initial interaction is important for new members to feel welcomed.
Helpful Users
Most users are good citizens on the forums and will do their best to participate properly. Some users, however, will go above and beyond what is expected. It is to your advantage to recognize these users and encourage them to keep doing what they do.
Active helpful users may reach Trust Level 3 (TL3), which allows them to help edit titles and change topic categories. Users can also be manually promoted to TL4, which grants them global edit privileges on any topic or post they can see.
Moderator Communication
Often a moderator will operate as part of a larger team which includes other moderators, as well as site admins/owners, and in many cases TL3/TL4 users. Regular and open communication between all should be encouraged.
The Staff Category: The Staff category is a default category on all Discourse installs restricted to site staff: admins and moderators. The Staff category is a great place for moderators to discuss what they’re seeing and doing within the site, as well as to document internal policies and procedures.
Whispers: When groups are added to the whispers_allowed_groups site setting, members of those groups can take advantage of whispers. Whispers allow them to create private replies within an existing topic or PM. This allows staff to discuss issues within the topic, so no context is lost. Whispers can also be used to mention other staff if assistance is required, but a public reply would be inappropriate, and an invite wouldn’t provide the necessary context.
As of October 2022, the Lounge category is no longer included by default in new sites but is included here for reference. If you think it would be useful for your site, you can set one up using the category permissions.
The Lounge: The Lounge is a category restricted to users TL3 or above (it is no longer created by default on new installs). The Lounge is a great place for the moderator team to communicate with the site’s trusted users. These users should be encouraged to share their thoughts and concerns with the site staff within this category.
Other Discourse moderation guides:
This guide is also available in French: 🇫🇷 Guide des modérateurs
Last edited by @MarkDoerr 2026-06-27T01:13:41Z
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