I would like to support this. My use case - I have a group of “limited” users; I want them to be able to read most categories, but write only in one, let’s call it “starting cat.”.
I can of course use existing solution (and trust levels of course), but if I want to have more fine-grained permission system, it gets hectic.
Instead of setting up permissions like this:
display: everyone
post: everyone NOT greenhorns
I have to do something like this:
display: everyone
post: Group 1
Group 2
(...and basically each and every other group...)
reply: Group a
Group b
(...and once again...)
@robmc, looks like Jeff recategorized this already. Unless I’ve misread this, your request is the same as mine (linked above, long before I joined the Discourse team). Do you mind if the topics are combined, or do you feel yours is different?
Well, our use cases are similar, but our current proposed solutions look a little different
I don’t mind combining them at all, but I think that your original proposal was to have a single category for putting members into that would stop them being in ‘everyone’ but I would prefer to have logic in the security that allowed us to use “IS NOT” (or can’t / exclude) in the same way we use “IS” (or Can) as I think this would give more flexibility
They are similar issues, but not quite the same and it is possible that a single technical solution would address both, but I’m not sure. Happy to put them together to explore it though
I’m not precious … just wanting to help make this even better for everyone
So my usecase at the time was a single category that I needed to restrict access to, but the solution is the same as you suggested: an “exclude” or “not” security permission for categories.
Having Add+Subtract moves the system into a whole range of potential conflicts requiring resolution. At the least, the order of putting in permissions will now be significant, and so there will necessitate a reorder function to move things up/down.
Otherwise, there is no way to resolve potential conflicts when a person:
is in more than one group
one group is permitted access
another group is denied access
EDIT: Or you can say Add always trumps Subtract, or vice versa. Nevertheless, it makes things very hard to understand.
Although I can understand the pain you’re going through in order to request this… I have tons and tons of groups and each category’s permissions list is like 15 long, just to do what you’re looking to do – that is, to exclude a particular group from access while opening to most others.
Since all sites are currently like yours, it might be that the solution is to have two steps / sections … the first is the INCLUSION (which is the current context, so even if the change is made nothing is affected) where you build up a total population to view this, then a second step below would be the EXCLUSION which would remove a portion of those that matched certain criteria.
There is also a need for intersection, meaning that the permission is only for users with two or more groups set.
For example, Sales & USA ==> any user having both the group Sales and USA. Then this combo should have access to USA Sales Leads category. In other words, the group is the “intersection” of a number of groups. Currently, the permission system works on the “union” of listed groups.
This will solve neatly the common headaches of setting up permission with sub-categories (where in many cases, the users permitted into the sub-categories will only be among the ones permitted into the parent category). It is necessary because, in Discourse, sub-categories do NOT inherit permissions.
I as well would love an exclude option and maybe it can be relatively simple: just allow us to add a group to the security settings of a category and let us uncheck the See box.
Right now if I add a group to the category security settings, I am able to uncheck the Create and Reply boxes but not the See box. If I could so uncheck the See box, then the logic seems like it could be “if user belongs to any group that does not have See permissions, do not let the user see the category.”
Makes me wonder how conflicting permissions work right now: if a user belongs to group A and group B and group A can create topics in that category but group B cannot create topics, can the user create a topic in that category? In other words, which takes precedence?
I assume it works right now as in “if user belongs to any group that has X permission, then grant that permission to the user” but I’m not sure…I just tested and that seems to be the case.
Permissions are effectively cumulative, there’s no such thing as a conflict in that sense. The highest inherited permission always wins. I can be added to one group which lets me see a category, and also another which lets me contribute.
Why would you need to exclude a group unless you’ve also explicitly given access through another membership?
I think the simplest example would be to give see, reply, and create permissions to everyone and then add group X and uncheck see, reply, and create so that everyone can see, reply, and create in that category except for group X members.
How it might apply to me currently: I use Memberful as an SSO provider on Discourse and WordPress and I want to sell three packages, two of the more expensive with access to the forum and the lowest one with no access. However, I think they may still get access because of syncing accounts across SSO and so I want to limit their access so they can’t see any categories and maybe can just send me PMs. I think I can do it by adding group Y and group Z to all the categories and not everyone and that works because i dont have many groups, but I think if I had many, unchecking the box for See would be easier.
I too would like to be able to set up small group and exclude them from some categories on the site, but let them see other categoires as full members do.
To use the Slack compariision above, make people in that small group “Multi-Channel Guest: These accounts can only access selected channels”
In short, I would like to be able to exclude groups from individual categories.
I think I might of thought of a way of aheiving something like this based on existing functionality.
Lets say I want to keep any topics that are tagged “secret” non-visible to a certain group.
Is it not as simple as changing the group’s settings so that any topics tagged “secret” are muted for group members?
Likewise if I want to a keep a category non-visible to a certain group, is it not as simple as changing the group’s settings so that any topics in that category are muted for group members? (and also installing the Hide Muted Categories theme component)?
Also - I can’t find any documentation describing how the Discourse muting functionality works - can anyone help?
How secret are those topics? When you mute something by default (for everyone or for members of a group), users can still edit their preferences to unmute it. Also, muted topics are hidden in topic lists, but not, for example, in search results.
