Discourse Private Replies

RGJ · July 6, 2021, 5:29pm

I always forget that, sorry. I’ve put the MIT license on it.

Looking forward to the new features!

cookieman768 · July 28, 2021, 4:45am

Do you think you could add a category setting to force this to be enabled on all posts in a category?

Edit: After using this, I’m thinking I’d want all replied to be hidden, including from staff and the OP. Do you think that this is something that could be added? I’m using this in conjunction with the Wizards plugin to make an application forum - I’m wanting the application itself to be visible for transparency but responses to it should be confidential.

RGJ · July 31, 2021, 4:17pm

I’m accepting pull requests, or I can add extra functionality as a paid project.

I am not sure if I understand you correctly.
If no one can see the posts from staff or the OP, why would they bother posting?

cookieman768 · July 31, 2021, 5:30pm

I was thinking of using it to report bugs or exploits. Thinking about it more I might be able to just make replies moderated. I appreciate your time and thank you for replying and great work on the plug-in!

nathank · November 22, 2021, 12:09am

I’d love this to be available on a per-category basis. It would be extremely helpful for a short community activity / poll, but only if limited to that tiny slice of our Forum.

RGJ · November 22, 2021, 7:36am

I’m accepting pull requests, or I can add extra functionality as a paid project.

jrgong · January 18, 2022, 10:55am

Hey Richard

love the plugin! We gonna start using it for our advertisement client category to share new sponsoring offers with them. That way we don’t have to open a duplicate topic for each clients’ category but one topic will be sufficient and they can reply to those without seeing the other clients’ replies.

Just two feature requests:

Is it possible to restrict the usage of the plugin per group or per category? We don’t want the rest of the forum to see that feature, but only our staff and only in specific categories.
It would be really helpful to add a confirmation prompt right after clicking the Private Replies button. That way users will understand more clearly what exactly will happen after they click the button. And it will prevent accidental clicks.

Benjamin_D · January 13, 2023, 2:24pm

Hi Richard,
it seems there is an issue with the search patch (rebuilt with latest)

github.com

communiteq/discourse-private-replies/blob/602992c3241366273b8156d352d68dd35a735687/plugin.rb#L96


      
                  @posts = @posts.where('(posts.post_number = 1 OR posts.user_id IN (?))', userids)
                end
              end
              @posts
            end
          end
          
          
# hide posts from search results
          module PatchSearch
          
          
  def execute(readonly_mode)
              super
          
          
    if SiteSetting.private_replies_enabled && !DiscoursePrivateReplies.can_see_all_posts?(@guardian.user, nil)
                userids = DiscoursePrivateReplies.can_see_post_if_author_among(@guardian.user, nil)
                
                protected_topics = TopicCustomField.where(:name => 'private_replies').where(:value => true).pluck(:topic_id)
                
                @results.posts.delete_if do |post|
                  next false unless protected_topics.include? post.topic_id # leave unprotected topics alone
                  next false if userids.include? post.user_id               # show staff and own posts

def execute(readonly_mode: @readonly_mode)
seems to solve it though

RGJ · January 13, 2023, 3:10pm

Will be addressing this very shortly. Thank you for the notification and sorry for the problems!

RGJ · January 13, 2023, 3:30pm

Oh, another lovely case of Ruby 3.1 breaking changes Separation of positional and keyword arguments in Ruby 3.0

It’s fixed now.

Aizada_M · December 10, 2023, 5:31am

Thank you very much for sharing this wonderful plugin That’s what I was looking for
One question. When a user replies to a topic, he sees the reply of the author of the topic that the author wrote to others, although the user does not see the messages of other users. Is this expected behavior or a bug?

RGJ · December 10, 2023, 7:44am

That is by design.

Aizada_M · December 10, 2023, 2:17pm

Thank you for the quick response!
I can’t understand why a user should see replies from the topic author written by other users? I expected that the user would only see his message, the message of the topic author written only to him, and messages from the staff. When a user sees a thread author’s answer written by other users, it creates confusion and can discourage the user, since the author’s answer to his question may be seen by others. For example, if the author of the topic is a doctor and people contact him in private mode, then they would like only themselves and the doctor to see the diagnosis from the doctor, and not other users.

Moin · December 10, 2023, 2:45pm

I think the use case for this plugin is different from yours. Maybe Private Topics Plugin would be better for yours. Then users could start a topic only they and the doctor can see.

Aizada_M · December 10, 2023, 2:51pm

I already have this wonderful plugin installed and am already using it in another category.

I include the Private Replies plugin in the category where topics can only be created by partners and forum staff. In this category, users can only reply to topics. Each topic is a person that users can contact.

RGJ · December 10, 2023, 5:03pm

That’s not what this plugin is meant for. The use cases are to keep the users responses hidden for each other, and often only on a temporary basis. The topic author can be a teacher or a seller or something and must be able to post with additional information or such.

If there needs to be a private conversation then you will need to use private messages, and if they contain any kind of medical or confidential information then you would need to use the discourse-encrypt plugin as well. You might want to look at Create a link to start a new personal message with pre-filled information

Aizada_M · December 10, 2023, 5:59pm

On my forum, only privileged (advanced) users can write private messages.

Maybe give the author the opportunity to publish additional information “for everyone” by clicking the “Reply to topic” button?
Otherwise, it will cause unnecessary information noise, like this, where the user will have to look for the answer he needs among many others.

To be more specific. On my site, every character is an AI. When I create a topic, I contact the chatbot via @botname and give instructions. For example, “You are a general practitioner, your task is…” or “You are a marketer, your task is…”. And in a specific topic, the bot behaves strictly according to the instructions. I then hide these instructions in the topic from ordinary users and write separate instructions for users in the same topic. For example, “In this topic you can ask a question about…”. Therefore Create a link to start a new personal message with pre-filled information is not suitable for thematic communication with a bot, since a very large amount of instructions in the template (although I would not want to show instructions to users) can be mistakenly changed by the user and the result of the bot issuing a response may not be correct.

Based on the above, let me suggest the following additional feature in the plugin:
- Hide "Responses" by the topic author addressed to other users.

P.s. I would do a PR, but I’m not a programmer and don’t understand this.

RGJ · December 10, 2023, 6:19pm

I’m sorry, this is outside of the scope of the plugin and I do not want to clutter the functionality with options that make it harder to use for the target audience. If you have a budget, you can contact me privately and we can work out a custom plugin for your use case.

RGJ · March 27, 2024, 7:32pm

This is a much requested feature and after 2.5 years we finally found a client who was actually willing to sponsor it

There is now the site setting private replies on selected categories only which will unlock the possibility to enable this per category in the category security settings.
In the same section there is now an option to enable private replies by default for every new topic in the category.

nathank · March 27, 2024, 8:26pm

Brilliant! It has got me quite excited about the potential use-cases this opens up, whilst keeping things nice and tidy in the UI.

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