Author-only Topic (take 2)

[mbauman (Matt Bauman)]

Folks in our community are also asking for something like this very old (and closed) feature request for author-only topics.

Specifically, this is in the context of our community “package announcements” category, where we have many authors who post announcements and updates regarding their topics. Folks have realized that these topics can make for lightweight “release newsletters” if they watch the topic (with email!) for replies. But — even if highly moderated — that can get noisy fast.

@tedypranolo

To prevent noise, everyone else who would like to discuss the posts can only create “Reply as new topic”.

This would be a great behavior in this context!

The original ask was closed, citing:

@sam

This doable using category permissions

create a group for user, create a category for said group, and allow the group write, allow rest of users read

This doesn’t work for us because there isn’t a clear group. Anyone can create packages, and we want anyone to create (and then update) their announcement topics.

I’ve not found any other workarounds here, but it seems like it’d be useful for other communities, too.

[thoka (Thomas Kalka)]

@RGJ’s Private Topics Plugin should be hackable to suit your needs.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I think it should be possible to hide the reply button in a category with CSS. It wouldn’t stop people from replying, but it would clearly be bad behavior if someone did.

[mbauman (Matt Bauman)]

Those are both an interesting thoughts — I’m open to other ways of acheiving this goal, too. Another option might just be changing the default to reply-as-new-topic:

Change individual topics to default to reply in a new topic

We have certain FAQ topics (mostly owned by staff), which are closed, so that people do not start a discussion in them. But then they also do not get the quote option, if they highlight parts of them. Other topics (usually the current change log) are open, and people are supposed to reply in a new topic, but its just easier to reply in the existing one and these quickly (and always) turn into a mess. As a moderator I’d like to change them into a Hub Topic, which stays open, but automatically s…

[jrgong]

Hey Matt,

Maybe the Journal plugin would be something suitable? We are currently using it in our forum for grow diaries where non-authors can only leave indented comments while the “main feed” is for the topic author only.

You can see it in action here in one of our report subcategory: KANNABIA SPRING GROW '23 - Forum | Cannabisanbauen.net

[jericson (Jon Ericson)]

This seems like a good, lightweight option. It’s in an early draft stage, but I’m working on a theme component that will let me add the “published” tag to a topic in order to strip away all the user interface widgets I don’t want people to see.^[1] I got the idea from this post:

Page Publishing

An alternative to Page Publishing - another method is to use CSS to remove the unwanted elements on a regular Topic Post, while preserving all of the functionality (i.e. Javascripts in installed Theme Components, and CSS styling, etc.) Tags in the composer can be used to selectively apply formatting to a specific Topic Post. For example, on my site I achieve this by pasting the following CSS into my theme’s CSS in the Common tab: /********************** REMOVE THINGS FROM LAYOUT USING TAGS **…

It shouldn’t be hard to disable the reply button based on a tag or category.

---

1. It’s part of a project to replace a company’s static pages with Discourse. Surprisingly, the Discourse version performs better on the PageSpeed Insights metrics! ↩︎

[thoka (Thomas Kalka)]

One would have to disable reply by mail also.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Good catch, but it looks like it might be off already.

[mbauman (Matt Bauman)]

That looks really cool! I take it the journal plugin you’re using there is Pavilion’s?

https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-journal

Do those indented replies come through as notifications to everyone that’s watching the topic?

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@thoka

@RGJ’s Private Topics Plugin should be hackable to suit your needs.

My Private Replies plugin (not to be confused with my Private Topics plugin) does kind of what you want without hacking.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

This plugin will accomplish what your looking for

Discourse Restricted Replies

Summary Discourse Restricted Replies adds a per-category setting allowing staff to restrict replies on topics to the topic creator and members of specific groups. Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-restricted-replies Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features This plugin adds a per-category setting allowing staff to restrict replies to the OP, and members of specific groups. This is a bolt-on t…

It only allows the Op and a definable group participate in a topic.

ie Op & Staff.

No one can reply to the topic in the ie above

@RGJ beat me to it but as mentioned he was the creator.

Great plugin for a wide variety of uses.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@Heliosurge

@RGJ beat me to it but as mentioned he was the creator.

Actually, Restricted Replies (Discourse official) and Private Replies (mine) are different plugins. I think in this case, Restricted Replies would be a better fit.

[jrgong]

@mbauman

Do those indented replies come through as notifications to everyone that’s watching the topic?

Yep, they come through as regular notifications. I am not even sure if there would be a way to disable notifications specifically.

Just one disclaimer: The journal plugin development might be discontinued with discourse 3.3 since we are pretty much the only community using it.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

Thanks for clarifying. I see we posted 2 different plugins. My apologies for the confusing the 2.