User profile mute/ignore button - should it not be a bell icon instead of person icon?

I don’t know the history of how this feature came to be and the icons chosen for it, but over the years I have found it confusing to come across this Normal button which seems to indicate that the user I am looking at is normal!? It only makes sense once you select it and see the pulldown, but I don’t have any incentive to do so because I have never needed to mute or ignore a user. So I am confronted constantly with this confusing bit of UI on everry discourse site I am on and wondering if I can change a user to abnormal. :crazy_face:

Screen Shot 2021-03-01 at 6.03.27 AM

New users or guests on Discourse for Teams sites who are not allowed to start messages or access staff features here also only see this one lonely button and nothing else in the top right corner.

I get that they also should be allowed to mute or ignore users they don’t want to hear from, but maybe this location for the setting is a bit overly prominent? Would it make sense to move it down to the bottom right corner, like on the user admin page where the most dangerous buttons to impersonate, delete user, etc live? Muting/ignoring a user is an extreme measure, if you ask me.

If the feature wants to live on in its current location, it seems to me it should at least match other places where you can choose a notification level, with the bell icon which indicates that the button is about notifications. Below is an example from a category. Normal and Muted icons could be copied from here, and ignored could remain with the eyeslash as it is now.

Screen Shot 2021-03-01 at 6.44.05 AM

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If the bell is not desired due to its similarity with the topic notifications, maybe a different set of glyphs? Perhaps replacing Normal with Not Muted could be another option.

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Maybe – what do you think @awesomerobot ?

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For the default state, I wonder if it would be better to label the button with the action you’re taking instead of the current state? Would that be confusing?

Then in the dropdown:

I think “not muted” works too if we want to always show the state, better than normal either way!

Screen Shot 2021-03-02 at 1.38.07 PM

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Ol’ Jakob Nielsen would be appreciative of showing the state in some way or another without having to click into the drop-down.

Maybe the button could look something like the status icon+type of action (rather than reusing the “mute” term, and display that term consistently regardless of the state, e.g.:

:x:   Notifications

I really don’t like “not muted”. For many, many reasons that would be a hard pass from me. :frowning:

Perhaps we can focus on the glyphs, instead? That was the focus of the topic as stated.

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We could make it a bit harder to mute and ignore users. Only show this control:

If a user is either muted or ignored per:

It adds friction to muting and ignoring users, but not too much friction.

Then we keep our existing control as is and as you click around users you would never see “Normal” …

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You’re right that part of the conundrum is deciding what to display there for the “normal” state of notification from a user … but I do think not showing the control at all, while an interesting idea, would result in pushback from a number of communities.

I would prefer we specifically focus on the glyph at this time, and defer any discussion about text to a later date.

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Now that I see this again… why not use the same icons we use for topic/category tracking? we use the same words… and normal/muted concern notifications in a similar way.

Screen Shot 2021-03-16 at 10.19.56 PM

I actually feel better about the wording if we go that way too.

Edit: we also already use the bell slash in user notification preferences

Screen Shot 2021-03-16 at 10.40.29 PM

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Yes 100% agree, that’s what I proposed above! Let’s make it so! :raised_hands:

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Hello, I know its been awhile but 3+ years later this makes good sense. Normal with a person icon is deeply weird and confusing.

By any chance does anyone have any CSS that can help me replace the person icon with a bell? I’ve been trying to do it but running into issues. Any help greatly appreciated.

Hi Earnie,

Perhaps this post may lead you in the right direction, you can specify it for specific states:

Thanks. That did the trick.

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:wave: We’re going to update this to replace the person icon with a bell icon, as mocked by @awesomerobot here:

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