The discussion addresses confusion regarding recent changes to the Discourse Review Queue, specifically how new user approvals are handled. Steve_Walmsley expressed frustration that the interface now requires selecting “No” (meaning “No problem”) to approve a new user, reversing his previous workflow where “Yes” meant approval. He noted this change is counter-intuitive and prone to errors for administrators who do not frequently check for updates.
putty speculated this was an oversight related to a broader change ensuring “Yes” always indicates a problem. However, awesomerobot clarified that this alignment was intentional to unify the logic across all queue types. The new framing asks, “Is there a problem with this account?” where “Yes” denies access. awesomerobot suggested that if this causes significant issues, the team might abandon the yes/no framing entirely for approvals.
Community members proposed several solutions to resolve the ambiguity. satonotdead and awesomerobot discussed using explicit “Approve/Deny” buttons for users instead of “Yes/No,” while keeping flag queues as “Yes/No.” Laurent suggested a mental model where “Yes” always means “Keep” and “No” always means “Reject,” regardless of the item type. RGJ proposed clearer labels like “Keep User/Remove User” or “Keep Post/Remove Post” to eliminate the ambiguity of “Deny” potentially referring to either the flag or the user.
Several admins, including Ed_S and Steve_Walmsley, agreed that explicit action verbs (Approve/Deny) are clearer than abstract yes/no answers. Steve noted he had to re-check logs to ensure he hadn’t accidentally rejected users due to the confusing UI. awesomerobot acknowledged the difficulty in balancing these conflicting UX goals and offered a temporary workaround: users can disable the Review queue consistent answers setting in /admin/config/upcoming-changes to revert to the previous behavior while the team gathers more feedback on the best long-term solution.
Am I going insane or have the new user approvals reversed?
I am used to going through the list of new user approval each day and clicking Yes. Today I realised it had changed to Yes = Don’t Approve - which seems crazy. How is the negative option the default for approving something positive like Accept New User?
This is going to lead to a LOT of confusion, especially among people like me who just quietly administer forums and don’t check the World of Discourse every day.
When someone applies to join, I really don’t want to have to remember that No means Yes.
They were not, the request from feedback was to make everything align in direction so yes/no always mean the same thing regardless of queue item type.
So with user approvals the new framing is “is there a problem with this account” where yes would mean it doesn’t get approved. This follows the “is there a problem with this post” framing that flags use. Yes always means “yes, there is a problem” now.
If the new structure for approvals is causing issues, we’ll have to consider further changes… which at this point will likely be moving away from the yes/no framing entirely.
First of all, I want to thank the team for their effort and understanding in analyzing and restructuring all this. My humble contribution:
Perhaps the rest of the users could correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that the majority spoke in favor of unifying the post/topic flags. Therefore, this vision of unifying those types of flags could be maintained, and adapted to also be compatible with an exception in the list of users for approval where the decisions are opposed.
I find both compatible, and I believe that is what could finally clarify both processes simultaneously, without causing any inconvenience to any admin/user.
Flags were already aligned, yes meant there was a problem consistently before the change. The outlier where the logic flipped was post and user approvals.
An alternative approach we could consider is completely abandoning the the yes/no framing for approvals and using approve/deny instead while keeping the ordering consistent so deny is in the same position as the “yes” flag action.
But then don’t we get back to the earlier issue where Approve can mean that a post is deleted when it’s a flag, and that it’s kept when it’s the spam queue?
I agree it’s not an easy problem to solve if user approval is also in the same queue but having “Approve” means two opposite things, even if the buttons are flipped, is still a bit confusing.
Right — would using yes/no only for flags, then approve/deny only for approvals be different enough to avoid the previous confusion?
I’m still interested in collecting feedback on the current state from others, so I’m not in a rush to change anything quite yet. If anyone would rather not deal with the current state until we’re settled you can disable Review queue consistent answers from /admin/config/upcoming-changes
This is a very difficult issue. I always thought the review queue was a little wonky and made a habit of double checking my choice. I thought the change made sense and made the review queue more intuitive. I never considered the scenario in the OP and I can see his point as well.
But I only do spam filter review not new user acceptance. Maybe the two need split up???
I think something like this is worth considering, where the underlying thing is the content or the user being approved or rejected. It’s a pretty good fit for my mental model.
Things like spam are are bit more complicated still because there’s often an action on the post and the author of the post.
So long as the dialog box makes this quite clear, I’m OK with it.
But it is a reversal, so perhaps much more explicit and clear button text is the answer.
Just be totally clear, that approve means the thing stays and deny means the thing is to be deleted, lost, or rejected. I think those two words might not be clear enough - as with the previous idea of approving a complaint.
Approve / Deny works for me, as does going back to the original version.
I am certainly not a UI expert, but in regard to a positive outcome (like a new user), I believe the first of two options should be to accept that positive, not deny it.
I just went through six new users before making this post and it felt very unnatural to have to answer ‘No’ to allow them on to the site.
Once I realised the change was in effect, I went back through the admin logs to check I hadn’t accidentally denied users because it was so counter-intuitive.
