Messages to @moderators when there are no mods

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Woa, this is a non-obvious pitfall…

I was adding an @moderators mention in my site. The handy user card for that group then has an obvious [Message] button. Perfect.

…and then I thought, hmmm, where does that go? @mods is an automatic group, and I have no moderators yet. So I logged in as a testing user and sent a message.

Back in as me, and … no sign of the message. Which is right, because I’m not a moderator. I went into my own user and granted myself moderation.

And then I see the new message. Good thing I didn’t have anyone every send a message to the mods!

Maybe there should be some Admin dashboard check-with-guidance like…

Heads up! You have no designated moderators, maybe wear that hat until you do.

It makes perfect sense for me to have to wear the moderator hat, but also makes sense for Admins on larger sites to not see the moderators stuff.

…ha, it’s worse.

I wrote the above upon seeing the green-new-message alert on my avatar. Turns out that’s the alert for “you’ve been given mod power.”

I am not able to see the sent-before-I-was-a-mod message.

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:thinking: I thought the first admin was by default also moderator, but you’re right, he is not.
Indeed:

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I want to be sure that this part doesn’t get missed by the Team. This is a big problem.

Having now made myself be a mod. I’m still not seeing the message I sent to @mods earlier. So now I’m wondering how many of my real users may have done that in the last 7 months before I realized this behavior. D8

(see reply below)

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An admin should be able to see all the messages at any time, even if they don’t receive notifications for them. They have an all-access pass.

On my test site I haven’t bothered to make the admin a moderator, and I can still access the moderator inbox and see all the messages:

No Mods
No Mods1080×1144 105 KB

Mod messages
Mod messages1080×1323 127 KB

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@JammyDodger is right. Which made me also look again in my messages (on the site where I now, freshly today, a moderator) and I see a Moderators group in there… and there’s the message—with an unread dot—from the test user I sent earlier today.

So, it didn’t send me a notification about an unread message in the Moderators inbox, when I was granted moderator powers. That seems like the correct behavior.

. . . which leaves me with the other point way above: Is it wise that it’s possible to have a site with no one in the Moderators group. Unless, I the Admin, think to check in the Moderators group . . . messages to moderators would never be noticed on my site. (Well, I’m leaving myself in mods for now for sure. :wink:

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I believe this has now been changed so the first admin is also automatically made a moderator as well. :partying_face: Hopefully that helps in situations such as this. :crossed_fingers:

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