What can moderators do to users?

Support
1

Hi,

I just wanted to confirm the default permissions behaviour in Discourse.

Can moderators delete user accounts, or is that restricted to admins only?

I just wanted to confirm there are no edge cases (for example users with zero posts).

We are running Discourse 2026.3.0-latest with only official plugins.

Thanks!

2

Why not try? :slight_smile:

Also see:

3

Thanks - I tested this on my own forum and confirmed that moderators can delete users.

For my use case I would prefer that only admins can delete accounts.

Is there a recommended way to prevent moderators from deleting (or anonymising) users (for example a site setting, theme component, or plugin), or is moderation policy normally used for this?

Thanks!

1 Like
4

Is that the only moderator ability you’d want to limit?

Or would it make sense to use Category Moderators? Those permissions stop short of delete user and a few other things.

5

this table shows everything moderators and other trust levels can do

also worth noting that all staff admin activity is recorded in the staff action logs at admin/logs/staff_action_logs

2 Likes
6

Thanks - category moderators ended up being the right solution for my use case.

On my forum I set this up as follows:

  • I created a group @mods.
  • I enabled the site setting enable category group moderation.
  • I assigned that group as the moderator group for each category.

This gives the moderators the tools they need for category-level moderation, while avoiding some of the global moderator permissions (such as deleting users).

For visibility, I also allowed the group to appear on /about by ensuring it is not listed in about page hidden groups, and adding the Mods group

As a small presentation tweak, I adjusted the group’s display name and currently have it set to “Our Moderators” so the /about page reads more naturally. The group slug remains @mods.

Finally, I added the admins group to the about page hidden groups setting, which helped tidy up the /about page layout. After doing that the page looked much cleaner.

7

Sweet! Thanks for sharing your resolution.
I believe that’s largely what was done for us new volunteer mods here.

1 Like