When a user is in a category where they do not have create permission, I’m still seeing the New Topic button.
Pressing it opens the composer, but with no category selected:
When I entered in the category it does acknowledge that I don’t have permission to create here.
I swear I recall that, in this case, the New Topic button should just be greyed out. Did that change?
Good ol AI Bot here on Meta pointed me to this change in 2025. Can we revert/disable this? It seems prone to user confusion IMO.
Hmm… I might be mistaken, but perhaps it’s the Default subcategory on read only category site setting? Does that help?
I don’t think we’ll be reverting this. We stand by our reasoning explained in that PR: we don’t want to block the user opening the composer, simply because they are not allowed to post in the category. Maybe they’d want to post in a different category, but refer to the topic in the forbidden category.
Since it’s not a bug, I’ve moved your topic to the UX category in case you’d want to discuss it further.
My gripe with the current implementation is that the New Topic button looks the same in categories they can and cannot post in, and it’s not until they click into a category to reselect the current one that they realize it’s read only. Whereas with the previous method, it was immediately apparent that you weren’t able to create topics there.
I understand the reasoning behind this implementation, but I think it assumes the end user will understand how/why it executes. I know my users will be confused by this. I guess I’ll try building something that replicates the old method.
For context, we’re changing a policy for internal folks posting in certain categories that they used to be allowed to post in. I’m trying to make the change foolproof to avoid the inevitable confusion.
Can you expand on what you mean here?
This is an interesting issue to me, I can see both side’s logic.
First thing that comes to mind is some kind of pop up or warning that the topic you are attempting to create is going to end up somewhere else other then the category you are currently in and the reason for this is you are not allowed to create a topic in this category…
It occurs to me that how it currently works might be a good way of having topics started in not the best or most appropriate category.
And of course the op could use css to hide the button or change the text, kind of hacky but
every community is different and I can see this as confusing some less savvy users
I can see this request being important under these circumstances
