This guide explains how to access user information, understand trust levels, and handle difficult users through warnings, silencing, suspensions, and trust level restrictions in Discourse.
Required user level: Moderator (some actions require Administrator level)
Discourse Moderation Guide series:
- Part 1: Getting Started
- Part 2: Managing Users (this guide)
- Part 3: Managing Content
Discourse maintains information on all users who register and interact with the site. Understanding how to access this information and how to manage user behavior is essential for effective moderation.
Getting User Information
Public Profile
You can get an overview of a user from their public profile. To access a profile, click the user’s avatar or username in a topic, their avatar in the topic list, or search for them.
Above their profile is a count of official warnings, suspensions, flags received, and helpful flags given by the user. Just below are details on the user’s account: when they last visited, posted, and registered. You can review all public activity by the user, as well as review the notifications they received.
If you are also an Admin, you will have access to the user’s personal messages as well. You can also view and modify the user’s preferences. This can be very helpful if a user is reporting an issue with their account that you suspect may be related to a preference change.
User Admin Page
From a user’s public profile, you can access the user’s Admin page. The Admin page can also be accessed from the hamburger menu, and then by clicking on Users. There you can search for users by username, email, or full name.
Once opened, you can review additional details about the user, including non-public information like their registration and last-used IP address. IP information can be helpful if a user appears suspicious or acts too similar to another user. IP lookups are completed locally; no data is sent outside the server.
As mentioned in “Handling Difficult Users” below, this is also where users can be silenced/suspended, and their trust level adjusted.
Handling Difficult Users
Note: On most forums, difficult users are rare.
Most users will be respectful, post appropriate content, and not cause any issues. However, you may encounter a user that just doesn’t want to follow the rules, is rude, posts inappropriate material, etc. How can you handle them?
Keep in mind, the below progression is a suggestion. There may be instances where one of the steps doesn’t make sense or the action was so egregious that a step (or steps) are skipped.
Don’t Make Assumptions
First, try to avoid assuming that the user has a negative intent. They may simply be ignorant of the rules, may not speak your forum’s language well, may be young, or have another reason for the way they act.
Reach Out Directly
Try to contact the user privately via PM to let them know what is wrong with their behavior. Remember to talk about the negative behaviors — don’t attack the user themselves. When possible, link to existing rules, guidelines, FAQs, or similar. In most cases, this contact will be enough. However, if it is not…
Send an Official Warning
When sending a PM to a user as a moderator, you can make the message an “official warning”. This PM will automatically gain staff color, and a notice that the user has received an official warning will appear on the user profile for other moderators to see. In addition, the envelope colour will be red to the user to mark that it is important: ‘staff / official warning’.
In the official warning, be sure to explain the negative behavior you have seen, detail specifically what you’d like them to do instead, and the consequences of not changing their behavior.
If the behavior continues, be sure to follow through with the listed consequences. You may choose to…
Silence the User
Silenced users are prevented from creating new topics, posts, flags, or PMs on the site. They’re also prevented from liking / reacting to posts and setting custom user status. They are still able to complete other actions, such as reading topics, replying to PMs, etc. Additionally, they can communicate with moderators via PM, so you can continue to communicate with them to try and address the behavior.
Silencing a user is done from the user’s Admin page. To access it navigate to the user’s profile, click Admin, then click Silence:
When silencing a user, provide an end date of this action, a reason why it was taken, and optionally, send the user an email explaining the what they can do to lift the silencing:
If the behavior still continues…
Suspend the User
Suspended users are prevented from logging in, and thus from completing any actions on the forums. A suspension is the strongest possible recourse you have for a user and should be used sparingly. Like silencing, suspending a user is done from the user’s Admin page. Like silencing, suspensions are for a specific period of time. You may want to suspend the user for a short period of time first, and if the user returns and continues the behavior, increase the suspension time.
When suspending a user, provide an end date of this action, a reason why it was taken, and optionally, send the user an email explaining the what they can do to lift the suspension:
Locking Trust Level
If a user posts too much, includes too many and/or inappropriate images, abuses the flag system, or similar, an alternate to the above is locking the user to trust level 0. This will limit the number (and frequency) of topics and posts the user can create, as well as prevent them from including too many images/links and prevent the user from casting flags. Trust levels can be configured from the user’s Admin page.
