Allow moderators to add their own mod message templates

Question

On Physics, I rarely use any of the boilerplate mod messages. One of the more common actions is warning a user about many homework questions¹. For this, I have a template in the chatroom that I copy paste, occasionally editing to improve.

I'm pretty sure that there are other sites that have common mod messages not in the current boilerplates.

Could we get the ability to add and edit mod message templates?

^{1. It falls under the "low quality posts" mod message, but that message doesn't really address the specific problem}

Answer 1

I'd like to be able to both add and edit templates. But if SE isn't ready to give us the ability to add new templates yet (which has some design implications), could we please at least have the ability to edit the existing ones?

On one of the sites I moderate we've had a recurring problem with rudeness, and we have a meta post that supplements the "Be Nice" help topic. Ideally we would link to that meta post in our mod messages about rudeness, but often I don't because I have to go find the post and manually insert it each time and sometimes, err, you need to send these messages out in batches. It would help me and my fellow mods a lot if we could make that edit to the template on our site.

It would be best for the revision history to be available (like on other posts and help topics), as a check against too much unintentional drift from the original point of the message. It could be editable by a single moderator, like certain pages in the help center, or require a second to concur, like custom off-topic reasons and redactions -- either would be fine.

Answer 2

I've written a userscript that adds this functionality. Direct install here.

The standard messaging dialog isn't altered much - your custom templates will be available to select, and there's a templates link at the bottom:

Clicking on the templates link brings you to a list of your custom templates, with options:

To create a template, click new from this screen, and you'll be given some boxes to fill in. You'll need a name and some content for the message.

You can use standard auto-fill parameters in custom templates:

• {suspensionDurationDays} will be automatically replaced with the duration of any suspension in days;
• {optionalSuspensionAutoMessage} will be automatically replaced with the standard automatic suspension message, if you're suspending (it will be removed in the final message if you're not)

There is no support for automatically inserting usernames or profile links, unfortunately, but there's a usercard on the page that you can copy links or names from.