Show group opt-in guidance on topics you have no access to

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Continuing the discussion from Guide to Groups:

@ChrisBeach

if a user tries to follow a link to an opt-in category / topic that they’re not opted in to see, they get an unhelpful error, and no means of opting in.

1. If you visit a topic in a category you have no permissions for

2. AND you are a logged on user

3. AND can gain permission by requesting membership, we should display a helpful message saying:

Hey, you can not see this topic, but if you join the AWESOME group you will be able to see it, [request membership]

just pick the first group if there is a multi match

This does leak out a bit of information about “who can see” a topic which we do not leak out now. However to leak this data you got to create a group that accepts membership requests, so you kind of opted for it.

I really like this feature request, going to slot it for 2.3

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Yes I agree this is a very sensible request and we should make it so.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I have a community with way too many categories. It would be nice to be able to hide most of them but still make it easy for anyone to see them.

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

@maja can you add that to your list?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Where are we at on this @maja?

[maja]

Sorry for the delay. It’s almost done, will open a PR today.

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

Here’s the PR

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/7521

@joffreyjaffeux can you take over?

[joffreyjaffeux]

Ok I just merged it:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/7852

congrats @maja

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

This sounds great. Would it be possible to, say, have an example of its use on try? Does it Just Work if there is a category exclusive to some group and the group allows access requests?

Edit: I guess rereading the OP would have been smart.

[joffreyjaffeux]

It works as said in OP:

@sam

• If you visit a topic in a category you have no permissions for
• AND you are a logged on user
• AND can gain permission by requesting membership, we should display a helpful message

Meaning the visited topic must have its category with a group with request-able membership set in security permissions.

You need to enable the detailed_404 site setting for this to work.

There’s a screenshot in the commit: