Confirming - it's OK to set default watch for categories a user can't see

support
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Continuing the discussion from Default email settings for a new user:

So, now that this feature is in place, I want to make sure new users are watching all the right categories. The concern is that they won’t all have permissions to all categories.

I want to confirm my assumption, that it’s OK to set a forum’s defaults to include all the important categories, and that if a user can’t see the category, the fact they Watch it by default won’t hurt anything (and won’t generate emails to them from the categories.)

If I’m right, this topic about watching certain groups by default may be much less complex.

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Good question! I doubt anything bad will happen but a good idea for @zogstrip to check.

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Just checked and if you put a category that has some permission as a default, new users who doesn’t match these permissions won’t have that category in their list :wink:

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Great… I’ll be using this new feature to add all categories as Watched… It’s a far better user experience then Mailing list mode, and the unwatch this topic links in the emails are just fantastic.

I assume that people are likely to look at their profile & unwatch topics they don’t have permission to see. They may also wonder why they don’t have that permission. For that reason I have this request to make being added to a group auto-watch categories.

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They won’t even show up in the list if they don’t have permission to see :wink:

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Just confirming though, if you add them to a group afterwards, it will be magically in the list (unless they saved user profile in the gap of time)

Use case: Invite user to site and add to group functionality (user is created first, and then added to group).

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Gah… hadn’t considered that one.

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That is unavoidable, if they do that all bets are off.

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Sure, makes sense. I feel that these defaults are great, and if we can get the act of adding someone to a group makes them auto-watch xyz categories, we have a feature-rich solution.

Once the defaults are set, the users can fend for themselves.

I am truly excited to this come to fruition.

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Just confirming that there is a guardian call prior to raising any notification:

return unless Guardian.new(user).can_see?(post)

If you can not see a post you will not be notified or emailed.

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