Ways to post confidential info for moderator eyes only?

Feature
21

The author of the post, not the topic. You kinda need to be able to see your own messages.

1 Like
22

Oh! I’m having a moment of embarrassment I think. Got it, this is for the post, not the overall topic. Thank you.

23

Would this also work for topics? If so, it would mostly solve t h i s.

24

Nope, it will not work for topics.

25

Minimum trust_level?

In addition to author and staff only, could we possibly have an option to specify the minimum trust_level for a particular post when creating a whisper? e.g. trust_level >= 0 so the post is only visible to users that are logged in, or trust_level >= 4 since they’re almost like mods, and a ‘staff only’ option for very sensitive info.

1 Like
26

No, not in scope for our initial go at this, maybe later.

1 Like
27

Why not have a category setting which only allows user’s to see their own threads?

We have two such sections on my forums: Contact Admin and Contact a Moderator.

Create / Reply / See (All Threads)
Create / Reply / See Own Threads

28

This category already exists. It’s now called “Messaging”

Is there some reason that wouldn’t work for you?

29

Unfortunately it’s still not possible to send private messages to a group; only manually-defined lists of recipients are possible.

1 Like
30

Sure it is! I just did it. It auto-expands the group, but you can type the group name and it shows up in the auto-complete…

31

Can you say more about how this is done? I’m unable to do what you describe (get any auto-complete or expansion) either here on meta or my own site.

32

Go to Groups, create a group (or open an existing)
Let all users reference the alias for said group
Go to Profile > Messages > New Message
Type group name in Add user field (without ‘@’, example: moderators)
Click on popup or hit tab to expand it

3 Likes
33
  • It’s not quite the same as you would need to include people manually.
  • Also, once someone is included they will always be able to see it (it should really only be for ‘current’ mods)
  • And I guess it’s not as organised/searchable as a section.

Having sections as I described works very well as an official means to get in touch with forum staff, it’s also the place where we move threads that are not permitted and leave an accompanying note.

2 Likes
34

So, I just want to revisit this. This is something that is for the ‘staff’ group only? We want members of another group counted as the people seeing whispers (these are not moderators/admins - but staff of our company) while keeping other moderator actions unavailable. Is that the thing you said wasn’t possible/extremely difficult?

35

It sounds like what you want in that case is group private messaging, as covered above.

36

What we are looking to reproduce is the ‘internal note’ system that Zendesk and other systems have. We’re interacting and leaving notes/drafts to be read by a large support team and potentially others in our company - these are notes that are specific to the thread and need to be in line and reviewable at any time in context.

The whisper feature sounds perfect except that we want to specify a group other than ‘staff’ as being tied to Discourse’s ‘staff’ group is very limiting and we don’t want to open up all of those features for everyone at our company.

2 Likes
37

Maybe we can investigate a site setting for this

whisper group id or something like that.

Would that work for you? (not an easy change but doable)

1 Like
38

Yes, that would work. As an end user administrator ideally what I’d be able to do is go to site settings and change ‘Whisper group’ from ‘staff’ (I’d assume that would be default) to ‘new_relic’ as it were.

1 Like
39

I have the same situation - we also have a separate group for staff that are not moderators but should be able to view the whisper notes.

1 Like
40

Why not go a little further and allow ‘group threads’ where users can choose who can (or who cannot) see and reply, along with a category setting which allows or disallows them. Mods and admin always see them (or not, if specified in the cat settings).

These could be used to organise meets, campaigns, competitions, or just for social purposes. Having them in categories make them easier to find and categorise.

They could also be used as a replacement for PMs - ideal for sites where PM abuse is systemic.