I just pushed a commit that adds a button (visible to staff) to admin wrench to make a topic public or private message.
Small action post indicating that public topic is converted to private message:
Small action post indicating that private message is converted to public topic:
@techAPJ, is the later option available to moderators? Fully understand why the first is admin only.
Yeah, we’ve had a few scenarios on our instance where it would have been nice to be able to push a button to make a topic private. I have less desire/need to make any public, but from a moderator perspective, making some private could be beneficial (rare occurance though for us).
If moderators get the ability to make a message private, who are the recipients of the PM? If the moderator (specific user or group) isn’t part of the PM, they can’t view it…
I would assume those that are in the discussion of the topic.
Which is sort of the point. We as mods feel the topic shouldn’t be public, I don’t mind that I would lose viewability to it. Plus if need be the users of the discussion could flag it to report any problems.
Again though, this is such a rarity for us, that I don’t feel overly strong about needing the ability (was just stating we’ve had a few scenarios where it would have been nice).
I 
this in a big, big, big way. Will make a big difference in my community.
Many, many thanks. 
Not yet, currently both options are Admin only.
Does that imply this might become available to moderators later? If so, what would be the cause of the feature becoming available?
By “Not yet” I mean this feature is still in feedback mode so if you provide valid use case and @codinghorror agrees, then I can amend the code to make this feature available to Moderators.
Well, @cpradio has a good use case above.
My use case would be the following:
A few months ago a user posted a large number of support topics, all very valid. I helped the user in most of the cases. Eventually, the user PM’d me asking more questions. I helped the user via PM, and finally they were all set. In that case, I would’ve like to covert the PM to regular topic so others could see the discussion and troubleshooting we did.
PM to regular is a lot safer direction since it does not imply the mod loses access to the topic…
User option was never even being discussed, so I am not sure what you are talking about?
any chance we could get this on posts which are pending approval?
Unlikely as those do not exist in the same tables I don’t think.
Okay, this feature (both options) is now available for moderators too. Here are some caveats:
If a moderator can see / create a post in the topic/message only then they will have the ability to use this feature.
If a moderator converts a public topic to private message, then that moderator will be added as participant in that message.
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/b25d950d99d6c627790a78a26b6744bc5de4d746
