"Only visible to members of groups" message when sharing

ux
1

We want a particular category to not be visible to TL0, in other words, only TL1+. For that, we have set it like this:

Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.06.18
Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.06.181100×404 8.76 KB

And this works fine and only TL1+ can see/reply/create.

However, one of members noticed that if they click the post time, it says:

Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.07.50
Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.07.50906×240 16.4 KB

Which seems to indicate that only TL1 can see it which is a tad confusing because isn’t quite right.

So I thought if we should explicitly indicate all the other trust-levels on the category permissions, but then I get something like this:

Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.09.55
Screenshot 2023-03-13 at 14.09.551150×274 21.3 KB

Which I guess is correct now (if one ignores staff), but isn’t exactly making things more clear.

I tried keeping the everyone group with the intended permissions and explicitly add the TL0 with different ones, but that doesn’t work and I guess it could get quite confusing.

So my questions are:

  • Is this behavior intended (and I mean the “Only visible to members” message here) or am I doing something wrong?
  • Should we always be more explicit with permissions for all trust levels and not indicate only the lowest?

Apologies if this was asked/discussed elsewhere, but I only found tangential things.

2

Everyone with trust level 1 and above is in the trust level 1 group. So it is correct, because everyone with trust level 2+ is included already.

The message is intendet, it reminds you that not everyone will be able to read the post you want to link.

3 Likes
3

Share links will work on your forum. However if the link is shared for exanple on Reddit. The external visitor will need to logon and have min tl1+ to view.

4

Sorry if I wasn’t clear: I’m aware of why the message is there and it’s relevant to know when sharing. And as a Discourse admin, I understand how the permissions work. My quibble is that it says

Only visible to members of group: trust_level_1

Assuming that a user knows what trust levels are, they are less likely to be aware that whatever permissions a TL1 has, higher trust levels will have it to. And note that the sentence doesn’t mention permissions but groups: only members of particular group can see it, which leads to thinking that members of different groups can’t. Would make more sense if we were talking of some custom named group, but when the group is one of the trust levels, it can be confusing due to the permission inheritance that not everyone knows/understands.

Perhaps for trust level groups, this notice could list only the lowest one of them and include a “and higher” suffix — this would work even when the category setting only has trust_level_1. For other (non-trust level based) groups, they could be listed by their name as it is now. But, I reckon this is likely more complicated to implement, although less confusing for users.

1 Like
5

Pkay got it. Does seem reasonable with Trust Levels while being a apecialized group. Should be clarified as you said. Can only bee seen by Trust Level 1+ or TL 1 or higher.

My apologies for missing the context. Very good point.

6

I can think of a case where the behaviour as it is now is better.
You want to share a post with a user. So you want to first check if they are able to read the post. The popup tells you that you need to check if the user is in the trust level 1 group. So you check one group and konw wheater they can read the post.
If you also show all higher trust level groups it creates the impression, that you would have to check all of them. But everyone in the trust level 2 group is a member of the trust level 1 group, so there is no need to check that.

The message does not say “visible to users with trust level 1”. It says “visible to all memers of the group trust level 1”.