In a discussion titled ‘Forum divergence’ within the Community Building category, user Isambard seeks advice on managing a divide where a subgroup prefers technical discussions over general topics. Concerned about forcing new registrations, they explore options to create a sub-forum that does not clutter the main feed.
Users merefield and Noble_Fish suggest creating a dedicated category with restricted access, allowing specific groups to join freely while hiding the content from others. merefield praises the ‘self-driven’ nature of this approach. Isambard considers making the category ‘default muted’ but worries about discoverability.
User stephtara recommends creating a subcategory and unlisting it from general views, noting that community managers often must define boundaries when identity conflicts arise. They suggest informing members through community guidelines stephtara. Falco supports the restricted category idea, suggesting a link to join the group. Finally, NateDhaliwal clarifies that a ‘restricted category’ is configured via category security settings to limit access based on user groups.
There appears to be a growing divide in one of my forums where one group wants to go into more technical details than the rest.
Of course, I could create a new forum for this, but then everyone has to create new registrations etc.
I was wondering if there is a middle ground option for people to continue to discuss this in some kind of sub-forum which doesn’t bump onto the ‘main’ latest topics etc. has anyone handled a situation like this and what are the options?
why not create “technical_group” and give them access to a “Technical Lounge” Category for which the other members don’t have access?
When Latest renders for the “non-techical” group they won’t see these topics.
Maybe you can allow only specific groups to view this Category, while making the group freely joinable.
This can be set by switching to the Security module on the Category’s edit page, and you can set up dedicated category moderators independently (if you have enabled enable_category_group_moderation ).
That’s a nice addition 
- making the visibility self-driven and the regime nicely less “authoritarian”.
Thanks for the ideas. I think I will set up a new category and set it up as ‘default muted’.
Then people can subscribe to it manually.
Though I guess this does beg the question how they discover it in the first place.
You could even create a subcategory for these questions, and if I’m not mistaken, « unlist » topics from this category from the general category listing (I think that possible).
But definitely something you can manage with a separate category or subcategory, and user groups, as long as you think the two groups can coexist — if it’s a war to define what the identity of the community is supposed to be, that might be more complicated, and require you (as community manager) to step in and set the boundaries of what works and what doesn’t in your community.
I regularly have to manage this kind of thing in mine: members can have strong feelings about what is and isn’t covered by the community, and how. I take all the arguments into account, weigh them as best I can, and make the call. « No, we’re not including dog questions in our cat community. » « Yes, we allow questions about managing other illnesses than the one we’re focused on. »
It seems to me that in your case it’s a question of depth rather than scope, but it’s the same kind of issue.
You inform them? Make that visible somewhere in the parts of the community that explain what the community is about and how it works?
That is why the restricted category is probably a better idea.
That plus one topic announcing it with a link to join the group with access to it shall suffice.
What do you mean by ‘restricted category’?
A restricted category is one where only certain groups are allowed access to that category, or with restricted read/create permissions based on their group. You can configure this in the category settings > Security.