For the past two days, the OpenAI Discourse forum has been in staff-only mode.
Only staff members and users with higher permissions can interact with the site; everyone else has read-only access.
Users visiting the site for the first time are greeted with:
![]()
They may also see this message at the top of the page:

And this notification may appear at the end of a topic:
When a site is placed in staff-only mode, it would be helpful if these options were hidden from users who cannot use them. Leaving them visible is likely frustrating, particularly because users have no way to report the problem or ask for help through the forum.
