The discussion centers on a feature request to log site setting changes that occur automatically during Discourse updates within the staff action logs. Moin highlights a recent issue where the Disable Discourse Narrative Bot welcome post setting was changed by a system update, causing confusion for administrators who could not trace the cause without such logs. While some migration changes like allowed iframes are already logged, Moin suggests extending this to all settings with a context indicating they were “changed during Discourse update.”
gassim supports this, noting that their team wasted significant time investigating the disabled welcome message, which affected their metrics. They suggest admins should be notified of these changes in the Dashboard alongside feature update announcements. Additionally, Moin shares an automation script they created to send private messages when system changes are logged, though this relies on the feature being implemented. Finally, darkpixlz agrees that better communication is needed, proposing a weekly, opt-in digest of significant setting changes rather than notifications for every minor adjustment.
I know there are site setting changes by system in the staff action logs. For example, at the end of July, the system enabled rich editor on my forum, and in April, the allowed iframes were changed.
But when I tried to find out why the welcome message from Discobot no longer worked, it was very difficult. I checked for changes of settings in the staff action logs, but there was no change. That’s why I assumed the problem was not related to a site setting. If those hadn’t changed and it had worked before, it couldn’t have been the cause.
Some days later, I found out that the Discourse update had changed the site setting Disable Discourse Narrative Bot welcome post[1].
An entry in the staff action logs would have helped me to find that. Is it possible to add an entry in those cases?
When allowed iframes was changed, such an entry was added:
Is it possible to do this for all migrations of site settings? Maybe also with “changed during Discourse update” in the context field?
Yes, I agree with you that this would be very helpful. We had spent quite some time rewriting and formatting the ‘Welcome message’, and even based some of the monthly metrics on number of views/replies.
I’ve been having ‘zero’ views/replies for that narrative welcome post so when investigating we found out that it was disabled by the system which would’ve been very important for us to know.
I hope that this feature request to let admin know of these changes in the Dashboard where we learn about new feature updates too!
I just came here because I noticed Discobot got lobotomized and I never noticed until now. I think it would be great if there were more communication to site admins when a setting is changed (especially something big like Discobot). It isn’t really sustainable to notify for every single minor setting change but maybe a weekly, opt-in digest or at bare minimum something on this site would go a long way.