New default for whispers allowed groups

News and Events Announcements

AI-generated summary

Discourse is introducing an upcoming change to modify the default configuration for the whispers allowed groups setting. Currently, this setting defaults to no groups, meaning the whisper feature—which allows staff to post private messages within a topic—is effectively invisible to most users. The new change, titled Update whispers allowed groups default, will set the default value to staff (Administrators and Moderators) instead of no groups. This ensures that staff members can use whispers immediately upon installation, while regular members remain unaffected as they cannot see these posts.

This change is currently in the “upcoming” phase. When it moves to the stable branch, staff will become the permanent default, and the upcoming change toggle will be removed, though the setting will remain configurable for administrators. Existing sites that have manually altered this setting will not be affected unless they explicitly reset the configuration.

Administrators can opt in to this change early by enabling the upcoming change in the /admin/config/upcoming-changes section. The summary concludes by inviting community feedback on whether staff is the appropriate default group or if other groups should be considered.

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Whispers let staff talk privately inside a topic. It’s a feature people love once they find it, but the whispers allowed groups setting has always defaulted to no groups, so on most sites nobody can whisper and the feature stays invisible.

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To fix that, we’re introducing an “Update whispers allowed groups default” upcoming change. When enabled, the default for whispers allowed groups is set to staff (currently no groups), so admins and moderators can post whispers right away. If you have previously changed this setting, your configuration will not change unless you reset the setting.

When this change moves to stable, we’ll make staff the permanent default and remove the upcoming change, but the setting will remain available for admins to change.

Note: Only members of the allowed groups can see whispers, so regular members won’t notice anything.

Opting in early

To apply this change to your site now, enable the “Update whispers allowed groups default” upcoming change in /admin/config/upcoming-changes:

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You’ll see the change reflected in /admin/config/group-permissions?filter=whispers_allowed_groups:

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site-setting1026×149 13.5 KB

:megaphone: What do you think?

Is staff the right default for your community, or would you expect a different set of groups?

Let us know.

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