Can plugins achieve selective reply visibility within topics, and how can I create one?

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@HuengchI

a teacher assigns different tasks to each student and requires them to publish their answers (reports) on a Discourse forum. In this scenario, 1) the teacher needs to be able to see each student’s answer, and 2) some students may want to keep their answers private while others seek comments, feedback, and interaction. Additionally, 3) teachers may provide comments that are not suitable for public viewing.

This is exactly what the plugin was made for. You just need to do #2 and #3 with private messages or chat.

@HuengchI

or example, by creating a category with multiple subcategories, each corresponding to an assignment, and having students submit their work to the appropriate subcategory. This allows for control over each topic, and creators can choose to make their topics public or visible to specific user groups.

Creators can already choose between responses visible or not visible, and the plugin can also be set to have responses visible to people in the same primary group as the creator.
By using differerent categories with different access rights, you can further control who can view the entire topic and who cannot.

Again, no need to build extra, complex, fragile, functionality while this can be accomplished already by slightly changing the way you want to work.

Long story short, you have not convinced me that these changes are necessary. They will only add complexity, both for the users and for plugin maintenance.