As a community member, is there a way to see who the audience of a private category is? For example, in my community the general support community is « private but open to pretty much all members » but there are other « more private » categories with a reduced audience. As a community member, when I post in one of those categories, how do I get a sense of who the audience is, ie how public or private it is?

I think the admin could share that information in the topic about the category, something like: “This is a category with limited access only for trusted members to discuss more personal topics.” This is what I usually do. [Screenshot_20260213_113417_Firefox] As a user, you can also see groups with access to the category in the share modal: [Screenshot_20260213_111915_Firefox] Though of course, you never know if more groups that aren’t visible to you have access too. But even knowing who has access to a category now doesn’t really tell you who will have tomorrow. The topic could be moved to another category, or the permissions for the category could be changed. So you need to trust the forum’s staff that they keep it private, so I think you can also trust them to tell you about who has access.

[image] Moin: I think the admin could share that information in the topic about the category, something like: “This is a category with limited access only for trusted members to discuss more personal topics.” This is what I usually do. Agreed. However, if we accept that a mixture of semi-public and semi-private spaces is in the DNA of most online communities, maybe it would make sense to have the tool manage part of that « communication » — like it does by displaying a lock next to private categories. [image] Moin: But even knowing who has access to a category now doesn’t really tell you who will have tomorrow. Definitely, and something I’ve been striving to make people aware of for a long time! Knowing how the audience is determined today, however, is precious context to gage how I’m going to express myself and what I’ll say. For example, I don’t know who the future TL3 members will be, and so I need to keep in mind that other people with that kind of « profile » will read me in the future in a space where that is the criteria for participation. But knowing that will also tell me that I will likely not be read by people who have very little experience with the community. Also, just knowing it’s TL3 members doesn’t tell me who these people are (is « Judy » also going to be able to read what I write here? Or not?), or even a rough idea of how many people that means. Is it 15-20 people? 300? Half the community population? Coming back to Facebook, when you’re in a private group on that platform you know how many members are in it and you can see a list of who they are. I think that is the right direction in closed spaces, in terms of allowing people to make an informed determination about how they want to manage their privacy and interactions in said spaces.

There’s a feature request for this here too: Allow users with access to a restricted category to see who else has access

Seeing audience of private categories

Product Support

RGJ (Richard - Communiteq) February 13, 2026, 10:02am 2

A very recent plugin does this Discourse Reach and Rights

Topic		Replies	Views
Allow users with access to a restricted category to see who else has access Feature	18	1728	February 16, 2026
Feature allowing a Private Category to be seen, but topics remain hidden Feature	9	2345	March 7, 2018
Private category Product Support	9	3162	October 15, 2017
Enable visibility into a Category's restricted access Feature	6	750	March 18, 2026
View only category Feature	17	3093	April 11, 2017

Seeing audience of private categories

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