In a support thread titled “Access to particular private categories only,” Zbean seeks a way to grant certain members access to only one private category without exposing them to irrelevant non-private categories, aiming to reduce information fatigue. While making all categories private is a workaround, Zbean prefers maintaining a mix of private and public categories. Jagster confirms this is currently not possible via native permissions and suggests complex group-based workarounds, which Zbean finds risky and cumbersome. JammyDodger proposes muting irrelevant categories, but Jagster notes users can easily un-mute them. JammyDodger clarifies the goal is mitigating fatigue, not restricting access. Kartoon suggests assigning users to a group and disabling that group in other sections, but Zbean worries about maintenance overhead. JammyDodger then reveals that assigning users to a group allows admins to set default muting for specific categories and tags — a solution Zbean immediately plans to implement. Heliosurge adds a helpful tip: a theme component that sets custom homepages based on user primary groups, helping users avoid noise — useful for non-tech-savvy members. The thread concludes with practical, group-based solutions to reduce information overload without altering category privacy settings.
I am trying to figure out how to give certain members access to only a single private category. We find that within our organisation, members for whom only this private category is relevant get inundated with too much information when they also have access to the non-private categories on our forum, which are not relevant to them.
I know a solution would be to make all categories private, but I prefer to keep my mix of private and non-private categories, if at all possible…
Apologies if this question has already been anwered elsewhere, I searched but could not find the answer I needed. Thank you!
This is a feature request indeed, because AFAIK that is not possible. Everybody means everybody (for reading anyway) and there isn’t such system where it would mean everybody but excluding group X.
Sure you could move everybody else than group X to group A and then allow only reading for everybody, and posting for group A and again just reading for group X (only to help remember later what the heck there happened). But… that is a bit something, isn`t it?
Indeed, my feature request was to prevent information fatigue.
Muting would be an option, but my users are not tech-savvy (getting them to log in to the forum in the first place was quite a journey…) and I’d have to sit with them all individually to turn on this option.
I do not seem to be able to mute categories for them, which would be the next best thing.
Adding all users to one “all users” group and then excluding the information-fatigued ones from that “all users” group means that anyone who creates a new category should NOT forget to make it private AND at least include the “all users” group to that new private category. This is a hassle and risk I had hoped to be able to skip, but I see now that may not be possible.
This Customization > Theme component you may also want to evaluate. It allows based on Primary Group set in user preferences to set a home page for a group. This can also help reduce noise on top of Jam’s Tip.
I have a couple of users who have trouble getting used to block out noise as well.
