# Possibility to lock a topic to a specific user only + staff members

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/possibility-to-lock-a-topic-to-a-specific-user-only-staff-members/59623>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [21.Март.2017 14:44:17 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/possibility-to-lock-a-topic-to-a-specific-user-only-staff-members/59623 "2017-03-21T14:44:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nordize](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c68b51/32.png) [@nordize](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nordize)\
**Post date:** [21.Март.2017 23:49:04 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/possibility-to-lock-a-topic-to-a-specific-user-only-staff-members/59623/8 "2017-03-21T23:49:04Z")

</div>

I do have one more (on-topic) question though. If I want to turn the private message into a normal topic, I know I just use the wrench icon and choose “Make public topic”. This makes a topic in the “Uncategorized” category, which everyone can see. I can quickly edit it to assign it to a categoyr that is locked to “staff” level.

I’d like to avoid it being visible by non-staff at any one stage. My solution is to first “make unlisted” then to “make public topic”, then edit first post and assign privileged category, then “make listed”.

Is there a more direct way to do it via GUI?

Also, given the former user does not have “staff” privileges, I assume that they won’t be able to access the topic any more, but that none of the posts in the topic are lost/altered, right?

Via rails I guess I could do the following, which seems to work fine:

```plaintext
t = Topic.where(id:44)[0];
t.category_id = Category.where(name:'Staff')[0].id;
t.archetype = 'regular';
t.save!

```

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/possibility-to-lock-a-topic-to-a-specific-user-only-staff-members/59623)._