Questions about groups

Hello,

I am writing in French as it will be easier for me to explain the issue.
I have created groups and placed them in a category (I believe that is the correct approach); however, when I go to the group’s “activity” section, I see all the members’ activities, and some of these activities are not related to the group. Is it possible to remove activities that are not related to the group?

Thank you.

I think there is a misunderstanding (if I am not mistaken): A group is linked to users (a user attribute: they are either part of a group or not), whereas a category applies to discussion topics (which category each topic is located in). I don’t think you can “put groups into a category.” Unless you mean that you created categories whose access is restricted to specific groups?

You are seeing the activity of the group members. A group is simply a selection of members. What do you mean by an activity “related to the group”? Only what happens in a category whose access is limited to the group?

(Provided I have understood correctly)

Thank you for your response.

There is a lot of confusion; I believe this is reflected in my message. Can members of a group communicate with each other? I would like to create a group where people can communicate with one another without others seeing it. For example, I could create a group named “Airbus” (a fictional name) that includes all Airbus members. These members will inevitably discuss Airbus, but they may also be called upon to respond to other topics, such as innovation. However, within the group, I would like only interactions and topics related to Airbus to appear. Is this possible?

I must admit that yes, there are a few slight confusions.
I would say it’s like in “real life”: Of course, members of a group can talk to each other. But can we make it so they can ONLY talk to each other? (i.e., prevent them from talking to non-members of the group)? I don’t think so.

I believe we need to see things exactly as described above: A group = people who are members or not, without this having any real consequence IN ITSELF. For example, the group can be mentioned using “@group” (“at sign group”).

Then, there is private and public. Everything that happens privately is not visible to others. Note that a private message can include multiple people.

What you clearly want is this:

Create categories reserved for members of a group. You act at the level of categories that group discussion threads, not at the level of the group members themselves. However, membership in the group is what then grants access to these reserved categories.

Hope this is fairly clear.

(EDIT: Unless this is what you’ve already done, and things still appear in “activity” when they shouldn’t? Does a non-member of the group have access to the messages/discussion threads you wish to keep reserved for the group? If yes, the issue isn’t the display of “activity,” but your settings.)

Thank you for your response; I understand a bit better now, but it remains somewhat unclear. I want the “Activities” section to show only activities related to the group’s activities, not ALL activities of the group members. I’m not sure if this can be configured, but I hope this is a bit clearer. Sorry if it’s still a bit vague; I’m starting to really understand all the parameters and how to use them, but the beginning was a bit complex.

“Activity” = what it displays, not what you seem to want. If your issue is specifically THIS, is it important that “activity” displays this (and/or not something else)? If yes, it would seem you need to develop (or have developed) a plugin for this.

If not, the search function potentially provides this information: Empty search on a user’s posts within a given category (the “group’s” category). Is this indeed what is meant by the group’s “activity,” correct?

I think you should stop using the terminology “group activities.” Because what would that correspond to? Would you want an “activity” display restricted to one or more categories, is that it? The category or categories based on the member’s group (private or public categories, by the way? Are they accessible to non-members? You haven’t answered this point).

Existing default setting to do what I understood you wanted: No, I don’t think so.

Regarding a search (links can be created from it. Links you can insert into the member’s profile. Thus visible and clickable when clicking on the member). For you here on meta, restricting to the “installation” category, this would yield: Search results for '@Camille_Augereau #installation' - Discourse Meta , instead of this without restricting to the “installation” category: Search results for '@Camille_Augereau' - Discourse Meta (which would correspond quite well to “activity”).

However, I notice that only one message appears for now. I believe not everything is added immediately in the search; it probably takes a few hours.

This is even more confusing than earlier.


I am referring to this category; for example, the “transformation and innovation UK” category has nothing to do with the group’s activities. There is no connection, and I simply want to include in the “category” tab all topics created by group members and owners that concern the group. Therefore, I think it might be more appropriate to create a category so that exchanges occur exclusively among them, providing a space where they can communicate and share only with each other. I want a private group, so if I create a category, it will not be accessible to other members.

I apologize if it takes me a little time to understand; that is why I wanted to communicate in French.

That is indeed the starting point: Your “group activity” has a certain meaning in your mind, but it doesn’t seem to have one in reality (technically, I mean). How do you expect the forum to know the difference between what IS and what IS NOT “group activity”? That’s why I invited you to forget this terminology.

You need to identify threads in order to determine what would be related to a particular “group” in your context. OK, there would presumably be the fact that the thread was created by a group member, as you mentioned, but that is somewhat more difficult to search for (it would likely remain possible only within a “custom” plugin). So, automatically, your “group activity” would be a post in a thread created by another group member. Although this probably wouldn’t work in reality, since they can also create threads having nothing to do with the group…

The simplest approach is identification by category or tag. Everything within one or more categories, or the addition of one or more tags (the advantage being that threads can then be in any category).
If you want to restrict access only to members of a group, a category allows this (link posted above).

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Do you observe the activity of the user “camille” while logged in as an admin?

If so, I recommend creating a “normal” TL1 account to better understand the granularity of permissions regarding “who sees what”; the admin sees everything :sweat_smile:

Yes, of course I did that; I have several accounts under my name to test everything, rest assured… This changes nothing, and I verified multiple times before asking this question on Discourse.

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If I understand correctly, it has a dual issue: the one of potentially hiding private activity (from non-group members), but also that of displaying only “useful” activity, and not the rest (to group members). The question focused mainly on this last aspect. Using the search function after resolving the issue of identifying queues seems like a simple solution (instead of trying to use the activity tab).

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If I set the group to private, that resolves the first issue. Regarding my second issue, the activity tab is still present and I cannot remove it, so even if I created a category reserved exclusively for this group, the group members would still see everyone’s activities. However, the alternative of creating a category to concentrate interactions on a specific topic seems relevant and somewhat shifts my original problem. When you say “files,” do you mean “topics”?

You cannot make a “group” private. A category, yes.
(EDIT: Well, actually, you can control visibility, whether the member list is visible, and whether it can be joined freely. But I don’t think that’s what you meant.)

Unless you ONLY create private categories accessible based on group membership. Only activity in public categories is visible by default. But what is the underlying issue here? Hiding information? Avoiding distraction? Something else?

I have mainly used Discourse in English. Yes, “file” is likely “topic”. That was my own (poor) translation of “topic”.

(EDIT: Do you have a concept of “group” coming from Google, Yahoo, or Facebook? That makes the terminology a bit difficult to understand. I also have some trouble understanding your focus on the “activity” tab: Information is either accessible or not. Whether it’s here or elsewhere—I mean, the question is whether a topic is accessible or not. I don’t fully understand the importance of whether it appears in “activity”.)

I assume the guardian filters group member activity based on the permissions of the logged-in user. So, if members of the “camille” group, for example, and the person observing them, belong to other groups that have access to other categories, their posts in those other categories should not be filtered :thinking: should they be?

In my opinion, what is being sought here is not really the activity of a group, but activity within a category, which is equivalent if only one group can read/post in that category. Personally, I tend not to allow group members to access the member list (the group is visible only to the owner) and instead direct everyone to the categories.

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That’s where I don’t fully understand his underlying motivation :confused:

The activities … in categories visible to the groups that both “members” and “everyone” simultaneously belong to.

The crux of the “problem” is that it doesn’t really make sense to post “as a member of such-and-such a group”; one posts rather “in such-and-such a place,” which is reflected in the UI.

:bulb: ! Advanced search: posts from members of a group - #3 by JagWaugh
Perhaps this is partly a solution:
https://your.domain/search?q=category%3Acamille%20group%3Acamille

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This comes down to the same as “activity”. What I understood from their issue is that it’s not WHO posts that matters to them, but whether they posted something RELATED to the group’s “theme”. Except that it seems “obvious” to her what is “related” or not. If it isn’t defined in one way or another (category, tag), it’s not manageable.

Let’s give her time to digest this quietly.

hum… :thinking: it seems to me that “activity” is more like
https://your.domain/search?q=group%3Acamille.
Here, there is an intersection with category%3Acamille and filtering of what group members might have posted elsewhere.

And even more powerful (I discover something new every day :star_struck:), but you need the category_id

https://your.domain/g/camille/activity/posts?category_id=xxx
filters what is needed. I suppose automating this filter for the activity tab should be relatively “simple” :sweat_smile:, although… you still need to specify which category should be displayed for each group… :thinking:

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Yes, sorry. I missed that you were filtering by a category, in addition to group membership :+1:
That can indeed enable certain things if the category is open and not exclusive to the group. Maybe that’s exactly what they need, yes.

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Hello @Mevo @Benjamin_D

I have the same issue. When creating a private group, the purpose is for members to exchange information confidentially among themselves, without other members being able to read the exchanged content. That is indeed the objective of a private group.

However, each member of this same private group can view the activities of other members of that same group on the platform, which have no connection to the private group. This seems problematic… and this is also what I would like to disable, so that a member of the private group cannot read the activities of other members on the platform.