"Staff Notice" ➜ "Notice from Staff"?

[ToddZ]

Continuing the discussion from Hide Staff Notices from non-Staff:

@benjamin_bracken

We have been using Staff Notices feature to add notes for Staff, but I’ve just found out that these are completely visible to non-Staff and that this is an intentional aspect of the feature.

(…discussion of Whispers, custom CSS, etc. ensues…)

My UX suggestion:

@ToddZ

The choice to label these “Staff notice” does make it pretty ambiguous: it means “Notice from Staff” but could easily be misunderstood as “Notice to Staff”. An extra word in there could head off such confusion.

[mbauman (Matt Bauman)]

This gets even more confused if you hold both the “Staff Notice” on posts and the “User Notes” on users in your head at the same time.

[Moin]

Users with trust level 4 can also add post-notices. So “staff” is not entirely accurate either. Maybe “(public) post notice” like the tag here at Meta would help. Then it’s also easier to find the Documentation topic

[ToddZ]

@Moin

Users with trust level 4 can also add post notices

Do you mean TL4 can add Staff Notices? As I understand “post-notices”, those are the auto-generated new-user & returning-user messages. Even more confusion

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@Moin

Users with trust level 4 can also add post-notices.

Wait what? A post notice is created automatically, right? There’s no one who “adds” them?

So we have

• staff notices
• post notices
• user notes (formerly known as “staff notes” )

[Moin]

I think staff and post notices are kind of the same feature. You can edit a “new user” post notice by clicking “change staff notice” and tl4 are also able to do that.
Also discussions about staff notices are tagged with post-notices

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat I never knew that. I have always thought these were distinct features.

I guess this topic proves that the terminology is indeed confusing…

[Moin]

That’s why I suggested “post notice” for all of them. Then we have the automatic “first-time” and “returning” user notices and the manual notices by TL4 and staff.

Post notices (staff notices)

In Discourse 2.3.0.beta4 we added a special call-out notice for new/returning users. Staff can now add custom call-outs above posts, which appear similar to the new user first post call-out. In latest Discourse, we made it so you can also use Markdown. [49] This notes can be added from the button (post admin actions) and Add Staff Notice.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

Yeah, let’s call them “call-outs” at the same time…

@Post notices (staff notices)

Staff can now add custom call-outs above posts, which appear similar to the new user first post call-out

“similar to” implies they’re not the same, but the new user first post call out notice is simply an automatically created staff notice.

@Moin

That’s why I suggested “post notice” for all of them

[ToddZ]

Just noting that this semantic confusion has popped up here before:

We ran into a situation where someone put a staff notice on a post thinking those were only visible to staff (it was a quick heads up about a problematic user in a thread), but obviously the notices are visible to all, so we had to remove it quickly.
– Staff Notices for…staff?

Is it normal that a “note to staff” can be viewed by everybody, even not connected !
– Everybody can see “note to staff”!