# Whispering to non-moderators?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 23, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024 "2017-06-23T18:22:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@anon61128213](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon61128213)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024/1 "2017-06-23T18:22:27Z")
I like the new whisper feature, but I was wondering if it could be enhanced so that you can whisper to non moderators if you mention or quote them.
Currently I don’t get a warning like when mentioning someone within a category they don’t have access to, but they don’t get notified anyway.
Why would I like this?
Let’s say someone mentions the `@moderators` to ask whether the topic should be moved or whatever. Now I could send them a PM reply and the other moderators will see that I did so, but won’t see what I said. I could invite all moderators to the PM, but then they’d all get notified even if they are not watching/tracking the original topic. Now if I’d just whisper a reply to the user all interested moderators will see what I said, without taking the topic off-topic for others.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 6:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024/2 "2017-06-23T18:59:06Z")
> [@anon61128213](#):
>
> Let’s say someone mentions the [@moderators](https://meta.discourse.org/groups/moderators) to ask whether the topic should be moved or whatever. Now I could send them a PM reply and the other moderators will see that I did so, but won’t see what I said. I could invite all moderators to the PM, but then they’d all get notified even if they are not watching/tracking the original topic. Now if I’d just whisper a reply to the user all interested moderators will see what I said, without taking the topic off-topic for others.
For asking a topic move, people use flag \> Something Else.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2017, 8:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024/3 "2017-06-23T20:20:25Z")
I’m not confident that I fully understand the use case, but my take is that it is for post level read permissions within a topic.
IMHO, tangential discussion would be best in a PM.
If that discussion needs Moderator participation, the Flag “something else” will work.
I imagine that most Moderators getting a Notification about a topic they are not Watching and have nothing to contribute to the Flag message would not find the Notification for it to be that much of a problem.
On the other hand, a post stream within a topic that displays differently for different users is prone to presenting a confusing fragmented reading experience.
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2017, 10:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024/4 "2017-06-24T10:05:04Z")
There was a [similar discussion about this](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-this-secure-concept-for-private-info-in-replies/64385) not long ago. In short, it’s very difficult to do this in a way that is 100% airtight, so it’s a large amount of work for a very niche feature.
> [@anon61128213](#):
>
> Now I could send them a PM reply and the other moderators will see that I did so, but won’t see what I said.
This is where I don’t quite follow. They can see the link to the PM, so “what I said” is just a click away. Is that really a problem?
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### Author:  [@anon61128213](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon61128213)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2017, 11:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whispering-to-non-moderators/65024/5 "2017-06-25T11:00:38Z")
> [@erlend\_sh](#):
>
> it’s a large amount of work for a very niche feature.
Got it. 🙂
I just thought if it was an easy implementation it would be nice to have, but since it’s not feel free to close the topic.
> [@erlend\_sh](#):
>
> They can see the link to the PM, so “what I said” is just a click away. Is that really a problem?
If I click on the “one person sent a PM to this user” link I only see a “you don’t have access to this” page. I assume that is normal for mods and only admins can see PMs they are not part of? But no it’s not a big problem. If I really want to know I could just ask them to invite me to the PM.