Allow option for anonymous posting by moderators

[zoonini]

There are some occasions where it would be valuable for a moderator to have the ability to post anonymously in the support forums.

Having this functionality would offer individual moderators some protection from being contacted directly in Slack or "followed home" outside the forums.

This would in turn reduce the potential for harassment of moderators, which has occurred before, and which has discouraged some folks from moderating more actively.

It would also provide a unified voice to help better educate and familiarize posters with the forum guidelines, and also encourage more replies to remain public.

Posting anonymously could be optional – and other moderators would still be able to see who made the post, in case any follow-up is needed.

Attaching a quick mockup below for one idea of what this could look like on the posting side.

(I accidentally removed the original post, re-adding!)

[zoonini]

rough mockup

[Otto42]

+1

Suggested idea for how to do it on the forums. We make a "wordpress.org modteam" account. Such posts actually get made by this account. Information about who does what is saved internally. For moderator visibility only.

[dd32]

Replying to Otto42:

Suggested idea for how to do it on the forums. We make a "wordpress.org modteam" account. Such posts actually get made by this account. Information about who does what is saved internally. For moderator visibility only.

That's a brilliant idea, very minimal risk of the original moderator being shown or becoming anonymous to even the moderation team.

[mrfoxtalbot]

Thank you @zoonini for the idea and the mockup. I can see how this small tweak would shield volunteers from that type of harassment and encourage more people to get involved with moderation. Making it optional means that those who prefer to stay public, can do so, which is great.

In terms of how to go about implementing this enhancement, I love the idea @Otto42 suggested. It seems straightforward and solid.

Thank you all!

[mrfoxtalbot]

We might want to take 5552 into account as we discuss on how to implement this.

[zoonini]

Here are some things to consider when moving forward:

• We'll need to select an email address to use with the new account. This may be either a new one, an existing one, or a new alias. (We should also bear in mind that this will be easy to change later on.) The same address can be used within Help Scout to send moderator emails anonymously from there.
• We'll may want to figure out how to to turn off the automated emails that will be sent to this new account if someone @-mentions it in the thread. This would require a code solution, unless we just filter them out in Help Scout.
• We'll want some way to alert moderators that there has been a reply to an anonymously moderated message so that any mod – not necessarily the original mod who posted in the thread – can respond to follow-ups as needed. Perhaps this could be a Slack ping, similar to when moderators are pinged in IRC.

[mrfoxtalbot]

I feel it would be very helpful to implement this one sooner than later so I am going to go ahead and bump the priority.

We'll may want to figure out how to to turn off the automated emails that will be sent to this new account if someone @-mentions it in the thread.

Maybe we could have a generic moderation email that could be handled collectively my moderators? It could be an alias forwarding to the existing account recovery one. What do you think @zoonini, @clorith?

Other than that, are there any technical blockers or decisions that need to be made before we can move forward, @Otto42, @dd32?

[zoonini]

Maybe we could have a generic moderation email that could be handled collectively my moderators? It could be an alias forwarding to the existing account recovery one. What do you think @zoonini, @clorith?

Sure, I think that could work, perhaps in tandem with some sort of HelpScout filter or workflow so that these emails can be viewed separately from password reset ones.

In tandem with this change, we should probably also create guideline to make sure that moderators who are having a conflict with a particular user step back from email communication and let another moderator handle things with that user.

[dd32]

are there any technical blockers or decisions that need to be made before we can move forward

Nope, just needs implementation. We mostly just need someone with some development time to make the changes required.

[dd32]

In 12795:

Support Forums: Allow moderators to post as @moderator.

A checkbox is displayed on replies which allows the reply to be posted as @moderator, additionally, other moderators will see who posted a mod reply.

See #6839.

[zoonini]

@yui noticed that posts mentioning moderator are caught in the Pending view.

[fierevere]

what i have seen so far

1.
Posted by @fierevere (visible by moderators) is becoming
Posted by @. (totally anonymous, except IP address) when comment is archived.
Moderator name is not restored and remains "Posted by @." when comment is unarchived.

2. Hiding moderator name does not work for emails, recipient got:

https://ru.wordpress.org/support/topic/test-3/?view=all#post-12230063
Match: @yanabelle
Yui wrote:
@yanabelle notify

and

https://ru.wordpress.org/support/topic/test-3/?view=all#post-12230064
Match: @yanabelle
Yui wrote:
@yanabelle notify

there's been NO difference for anonymous moderator and non-anonymous reply.

[dd32]

Replying to fierevere:

what i have seen so far

1.
Posted by @fierevere (visible by moderators) is becoming
Posted by @. (totally anonymous, except IP address) when comment is archived.
Moderator name is not restored and remains "Posted by @." when comment is unarchived.

I re-used a meta value that is being overwritten during the moderation process, so yeah I need to change it to use a specific-feature meta_key instead of the generic moderator one.

2. Hiding moderator name does not work for emails, recipient got:

Hmm.. this was something I was afraid of, but worked in my testing.

[dd32]

In 12802:

Support Forums: Use a dedicated meta_key for the post-as-moderator functionality to avoid other moderation actions overwriting the value.

See #6839.

[dd32]

Replying to fierevere:

2. Hiding moderator name does not work for emails, recipient got:

https://ru.wordpress.org/support/topic/test-3/?view=all#post-12230063
Match: @yanabelle
Yui wrote:
@yanabelle notify

and

https://ru.wordpress.org/support/topic/test-3/?view=all#post-12230064
Match: @yanabelle
Yui wrote:
@yanabelle notify

there's been NO difference for anonymous moderator and non-anonymous reply.

This should be fixed in r20732-dotorg. It turns out that I had a customisation / fix to the notifications code from months ago on my testing server, which resolved this (it was intended on fixing something else). @fierevere can you re-test? Thanks!

Upstreamed the bug: ​https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3578

[dd32]

In 12803:

Support Forums: When @moderator is mentioned in a bbPress reply, notify any moderator who has interacted with that topic.

See #6839.

[fierevere]

The above https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6839#comment:14
issues have been fixed.

Real moderator username is properly stored and shown for normal, archived and restored comments.
E-mail's also work as indendent:

Yui wrote:


non anon notify @yanabelle

Support Moderator wrote:


anonymous notify @yanabelle

Replying to archived topic (A pending comment) also works properly.
Thanks!