my Discourse version: 2026.5.0-latest (601e66da60)
I was testing some group visibility behaviour on the /about page and wanted to check whether the current behaviour is intentional, or whether I may be misunderstanding the purpose of about page hidden groups.
Scenario
I had:
- about page hidden groups = admins, friends, Mods
- about page extra groups = Mods
A user was:
- a member of the hidden friends group
- and also a member of the visible Mods group
I initially expected membership in a hidden group to suppress the user from appearing anywhere on /about.
However, the user still appeared via the visible Mods group section.
After more testing (including impersonating a non-admin user), I discovered the behaviour instead seems to be:
- about page hidden groups hides the group section itself
- but does not suppress individual users from appearing through another visible group
The thing that ultimately prevented the user appearing publicly was changing:
Who can see this group’s members?
from:
- Everyone
to:
- Group owners, members and moderators
on the visible group.
Question
Is this the intended behaviour?
If so, it may be worth clarifying in the setting description or documentation, because the name about page hidden groups could reasonably be interpreted as:
“hide members of these groups from the About page”
rather than:
“hide these group sections from the About page”
The interaction between:
- about page hidden groups
- about page extra groups
- and group member visibility permissions
is subtle enough that I suspect other admins may make the same assumption I initially did.