I had a question regarding a “permission” aspect of the forum.
Quick explnation:
Our company migrated to discourse, we like it. In our forum we have categories like other forums. Users wish to view or not view certain categories, so we created group level permissions for each category ( via groups, which are able to freely leave / join ). In doing this it essentially requires you to be in the group to see it. However we want users who are viewing the forum ( not logged in ) to see these categories even though not in a group. In other words, let the groups only have meaning if you’re logged in. To accomplish this we haven’t found an answer really, so are considering professional plugin to be written to achieve this. I guess if it worked properly within the group permissions we’d have a category or selection for users who are not currently logged in.
If you want them to view the categories but not read the topics I do not believe this can be done. Otherwise if you want them to be able to read the posts you just need to set the everyone group to read I believe.
But I think I see what you are saying is that some people may not want to see those categories - so in fact that will not actually help as setting everyone to read all categories would overwrite the fact they are in a group.