I love Discourse, and using it in production for more than a year now. But there’s one thing in the back of mine which is kind of like a pet peeve for me. The silence functionality.
For starters, it doesn’t say how long you are silenced for or the reason for the silence (or I think the reason might be emailed to a user). I think these are important information which the user should know. We’ve had a lot of users make alt accounts just because the silence is not clear enough.
Also, for users completely new to Discourse, the message is a bit weird. It’s called “Your Account has been temporarily placed on Hold”, and the default message says that “your account will be restored after staff review”, which is clearly misleading as it’s just not true. A lot of users in my community create a message to moderators asking them to “review their account”, while in reality everything’s already set and they just have to wait until it the silence ends.
Because of user requests to modify this functionality, we have custom modified the silence message to reflect what has happened more accurately. I just have one question regarding the current system, how can I include the silence reason and duration in the personal message?. Maybe there is a placeholder or something I can use to be more informative to users.
And finally I just want to clarify what is the motive behind masking the reality behind this “account placed on hold” message. Does it provide any benefit to a community?
Thank you!
