Well, that does explain it. And I’m sure that code was written with the best intentions, but it is broken because:
- Maybe I want other automatic groups (besides Moderators) to be visible.
- The management interface for automatic groups does allow me to set the visibility of non-Moderator automatic groups, but this setting is ignored.
It would be pretty easy to just delete that block of code (and the cute typographical error that has survived the last 6 years).
The tricky thing, if one thought it were necessary, would be to change the current visibility setting for automatic groups to “Group owners” so that these groups don’t inadvertently appear for all the installations that are used to them being forced to be invisible. I don’t know if Discourse has some kind of mechanism to make such changes during an upgrade — but it’s the kind of thing one needs to during schema changes, so there must be something.