Notify an admin that they are reading a private category they are not a member of

awesomerobot · September 18, 2026, 4:56pm

This does seem like a reasonable warning to include in that theme component, I’ve opened up a PR against it for consideration

github.com/davidtaylorhq/discourse-admin-warnings

FEATURE: Warn admins posting in categories they aren't a member of (#7)

master ← awesomerobot:admin-category-warning

opened 04:54PM - 18 Sep 26 UTC

awesomerobot

+384 -25

This adds a warning when an admin is posting in a category that restricts postin…g to a group they don't belong to. <img width="800" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0e8bfeb8-62a7-4273-9c22-6e66c94e6769" /> When a topic is closed, it shows a combined message <img width="800" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c466cd07-8720-4d87-ad74-2556fa1af514" /> This feature can be disabled with the `category_permission_warning` theme setting New specs are included!

Once merged, it would enable warnings like this

Topic		Replies	Views
Ensure read-only categories remain read-only (even for admins) Feature	3	273	July 5, 2025
Private Topics Plugin Plugin	104	7173	April 22, 2026
New category permission - "cannot see"/"exclude" Feature	39	4924	September 9, 2026
View only category Feature	17	2929	April 11, 2017
Prompt subscription to groups for non members Feature	6	1057	January 14, 2020

Notify an admin that they are reading a private category they are not a member of

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