The issue of links to topics in subcategories not displaying as topic titles is being discussed. brechtm believes this behavior started after making all categories private. pfaffman suggests that this is not a bug, but rather a security feature to prevent revealing private topic titles.
bfrechtm argues that this is a bug, as even links to topics in the same category aren’t transformed, and it should work for categories with the same permissions. pfaffman disagrees, stating that the links still work and the title is clear from the slug.
bretchm responds that this definition of a bug is narrow and points out that dropping CSS styling wouldn’t be considered a bug either, but would still be uncomfortable.
Others, including Stephen and codinghorror, agree with pfaffman that this is not a bug, but rather a necessary security feature. codinghorror concludes that there’s a trade-off between making categories public and dealing with privacy issues around linking to topics in secure categories.
On my Discourse installation, URLs to many topics are no longer automatically converted to links displayed as the topic title. I believe this behavior may have started when I had to make all categories private (see Staged users getting user_linked emails - #4 by brechtm). However, all of my categories have the same permissions limited to the same group (trust level 1), so there is no security issue when displaying the topic titles.
The set of topics it still works for appears to be random; I haven’t been able to identify any pattern so far.
Yes, that “fixes” it. However, that is not an option for me since since this would enable sending the user_linked emails again.
Though I maintain that this is a bug. Even links to topics in the same category aren’t transformed. And ideally it should also work for categories that have the same (or even compatible) permissions configured.
You are not prevented from normal use. The links still work, they just don’t have the title in them, and the title is pretty clear from the slug anyway, is it not?
By that definition, dropping all CSS styling from Discourse wouldn’t be considered a bug either. But I’m sure you’d agree that the experience would be quite uncomfortable
My apologies if this came across as a demand for a fix. With open source projects, I just try to provide detailed bug reports, never counting too much on a fix materializing. It’s up to the maintainers to decide what to do with it.
No offense taken! And perhaps those that have a say in what a bug is will take your view.
Security is annoying. What if someone created the topic in the secure category but then moved it to a public one? Then the topic title would be there for all to see! the
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either you make the categories public, or deal with the privacy issues around linking to topics in secure categories. Pick your poison.
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