Proposal: Undo Official Warning

Hi all,

I’d like something like this: Undo an Official Warning

But from the front end. Perhaps the checkbox that is used to designate a PM as a warning, can be exposed to an administrator when they edit the warning PM in question, and it could just be a matter of undoing the check.

3 Likes

In a decade of community management, I can count the number of times I’ve wanted to undo a warning on one hand. It’s extremely rare and the consequences of having stray warning are nearly imperceptible. When I haven’t had the option to reverse a warning, I’ve just left a reply along the lines of “Oops. My bad. Please ignore.” That way the user knows why they got the warning and future moderators can see it’s a false alarm. In addition, there’s usually something that caused me to notice this account and leaving the warning helps other mods (including future me) know what’s up.

I’m not saying this feature would have no value. But there are many other features that would be of greater value.

4 Likes

Hi, sometimes mistakes happen. This is more prevalent on big boards with more members and more staff members. Discourse is currently on a course to improving the UI/X and the front end experience, like so: Introducing experimental admin sidebar navigation as one example.

Also plenty of big sites allow warnings to be appealed, even if they weren’t done in error.

It’s mostly a cosmetic thing for a number on someone’s profile, but it shouldn’t require Console access. If you don’t want to give it to staff, that’s fine, just lock it behind admin.

3 Likes

I have no say in the matter. :wink: But if I were designing the feature, I’d want to make it a toggle that mods can turn on and off after a message is sent. I have sent a message intending to be an official warning and forgotten to check the box. You’d probably want limit it somehow (only one change in status, perhaps) to avoid moderators abusing it.

I’d also want to consider how the change is communicated to a user. I think ideally the user wouldn’t know this happened if the mod fixed their error immediately. Not insurmountable, but the sort of complication that makes seemingly easy changes harder than they appear.

1 Like

I think that this would be a great feature - has my :+1:!

One of the reasons that I don’t use staff warnings very often is that they are difficult to undo. This is a particular barrier to our mods, who can’t undo it without significant admin help.

Having said that, I’d be prepared to dive into the console if needed - but many admins are not comfortable going there.