Explanation
As a regular on the Hopscotch Forum, I have access to most of the categories of topics, but there are some that I can’t create topics in, such as “Announcements” [as I am not a part of the team]. When quoting a post from a topic that had previously been closed, the quote appears in a new topic draft that is automatically set to the category that the closed topic is in. These two facts combine to give users a loophole, permitting them to create topics in categories they shouldn’t normally be able to create them in by simply deleting the quoted post and treating the empty draft as a normal topic draft.
Demonstration
For example, here is an empty topic draft in the Discourse Meta category announcements, which, like the Hopscotch Forum version, is normally off-limits to me.
Comments
While I personally have never seen this exploited, I believe that it already has been done somewhere out there, and that it could potentially be an issue if it happens frequently enough that the leadership team of a smaller forum is overwhelmed.
How to reproduce
- Find a closed topic in a category that is off limits
- Quote a random post
- When the quote appears in a topic draft, delete it
- Treat it as a typical topic draft that is empty