# Understanding user statuses, roles, and permissions **URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-user-statuses-roles-and-permissions/35171 **Category:** Site Management **Tags:** reference, users **Created:** [November 2, 2015, 3:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-user-statuses-roles-and-permissions/35171 "2015-11-02T03:36:48Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Page:** 1
### Author: ![Discourse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/discourse/32/148734_2.png) [@Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Discourse) #### Post date: [November 2, 2015, 3:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-user-statuses-roles-and-permissions/35171/1 "2015-11-02T03:36:48Z")
> 🔖 This is a guide for understanding the various user statuses, roles, and permissions within Discourse, including how they affect user capabilities and how they are stored in the database. > > 🙋 Required user level: Administrator Discourse has many built-in user statuses, roles, and permissions. These statuses and roles can be seen for a given user when viewing their profile from the users’ section of the admin dashboard: ![admin-dashboard-user-permissions](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/4/a/2/4a2479ac493ea708d2825ca720f36a297a61ef04.png) ## Permission Status ### Activated Account has a verified email and is therefore active in the Discourse instance - Account may login to Discourse, inactive accounts may not login - Inactive accounts can only verify their email (and other routes as necessary to complete registration). **Storage** : `active` boolean column in the `users` table ### Staged A special placeholder account which is created automatically by the system for email integration - No email digests are ever sent - Automatically watches all messages it participates in and receives notifications of replies - May reply via email to notifications - Username and Name are automatically picked - Account may still register with the same email and “take over” the staged account. - Cannot receive password reset emails **Storage** : `staged` field in `users` table ### Admin Admin users are the superusers in the system, they can: - Impersonate non-admins - Change site settings - Create groups - Amend site customizations - Perform all the actions moderators can perform - Read any personal message - Create, delete and modify categories - Ignore category permissions to view private categories **Storage** : The boolean field `admin` in the `users` table flags any admin accounts. ### Moderator Power-user capable of moderating the site: - Gets shield icon next to name on posts - Can perform all actions Staff can perform **Storage** : the boolean field `moderator` in the `users` table ### Staff A staff user is any user that is either an admin or a moderator (or both). - Immune to rate limits - Can process flags and posts held in the moderation queue - Can delete topics and posts, split topics, merge topics, hide topics and so on. - Can view user info (Excluding emails for moderators) - Can suspend, silence, anonymize and delete users - Can adjust a user’s trust level **Storage** : computed from the `admin` and `moderator` columns on the `users` table ### Category Moderator This is a non-staff user who is part of a group that has been granted select moderation powers over specific categories. This can be enabled per site using the `enable category group moderation` admin setting, and set for each category in the Settings tab of the category wrench: ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/2/2/b/22bc7697f70afc8885d3707576ec8c61a80f8190.png) ### Trust level 0 - 4 See: [What do user trust levels do?](https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/) **Storage** : the numeric field `trust_level` in the `users` table ### Suspended Account suspended from Discourse instance - A note is displayed on the user page denoting suspension reason - Login is not allowed - Account can only be mentioned by staff - No emails are sent to the user for any notifications (digest, message and so on) - As an exception, any emails initiated by staff are still sent to the user **Storage** : `suspended_till` datetime column in `users` table ### Silenced Either manually by staff or when an account is flagged by spam system as a problem account, all posting is disabled. - Account may not reply to any topic - Account may not create any topics - Account may not create PMs, but can reply to PMs - Account may not create flags - Account still can like and bookmark - Account can still change user prefs and about me (TBD if this is a good idea) - Mailing list mode stops working **Storage** : `silenced_till` datetime column in the `users` table * * * ## Other Status Users can have a few additional statuses not shown in the permissions section of the admin dashboard. ### New user Special restricted account for the first day of usage or new accounts. new\_users have special rate limits defined in site settings - Trust Level 1 account created in the last 24 hours, or Trust Level 0 - Non-staff account Limits: - Can only create a post once every 30 seconds (rate\_limit\_new\_user\_create\_post) **Storage** : computed from `created_at`, `moderator`, `admin`, and `trust_level` columns on the `users` table ### First day user Special additional restrictions that apply to a user within 24 hours of their first post - Has not yet posted, or first post was created less than 24 hours ago - Non staff account - Not TL2 or above Limits: - May only create 10 replies (max\_replies\_in\_first\_day) - May only create 3 topics (max\_topics\_in\_first\_day) **Storage** : computed from `first_post_created_at` on the `user_stats` table, plus `moderator`, `admin`, and `trust_level` columns on the `users` table ### Approved If the site setting `must_approve_users` is enabled a user must be `approved` prior to being allowed to log in. **Storage** : `approved` boolean column in the `users` table ### Developer Special account used to install Discourse > 🗒 This status is only available in self-hosted installs. - View [rack-mini-profiler](https://github.com/MiniProfiler/rack-mini-profiler) showing timings on the page - Impersonate any account including admins - Automatically becomes admin and has all admin rights **Storage** : controlled via the `developer_emails` global setting or the `developers` table, in Docker install use the env var `DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS` to specify an email list of users who are developers. ## Additional resources For a more detailed breakdown of the specific powers granted to category moderators please see [Trust Level Permissions Reference](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trust-level-permissions-table-inc-moderator-roles/224824). > Last edited by @pedro 2026-09-16T18:25:04Z > > Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-03T05:04:10Z > > > **Check document** > > > > Perform check on document: