Even if you set a trust level group to be visible by everyone, they are still not shown on the global group list.
AI-generated summary
The discussion addresses the issue where Trust Level groups remain hidden from the global group list despite visibility settings. Steradiant reports that even when set to be visible to everyone, these groups do not appear. ToddZ explains this is by design, as Trust Level lists are not intended for general users, citing previous meta discussions on group visibility. He suggests that while this may be a UX improvement rather than a bug, it aligns with feature requests to respect visibility settings for automatic groups. ToddZ also notes that functionality to add groups to the /about page is now available in core admin settings.
awesomerobot confirms that automatic groups are intentionally hidden from the group index to de-clutter the page, though visibility settings still allow direct access. He questions if this hiding is still necessary. ToddZ agrees that having visibility settings function as promised would reduce future confusion.
copymonopoly argues that hiding the groups is less critical because trust level information is already exposed via the badge grant history, which lists all users who have received specific trust level badges. However, Moin counters this by pointing out that admins can disable trust level badges entirely. Furthermore, Moin distinguishes between the two views: group pages provide a searchable user list with post history, whereas the badge page only shows chronological grant history, making the group page a more comprehensive resource.
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That appears to be by design. I don’t think Trust Level lists are meant to be available to the general user base:
But the behavior of the visibility setting re. automatic groups is confusing, and has been brought up: Respect the visibility settings of all automatic groups - Feature
(So this might be a Contribute > UX item rather than a Contribute > Bug, but I’ll see if anyone else has thoughts.)
If you have a case where it makes sense to publicly list, for instance, a few TL4 users, you might find this theme component useful: Add groups to the /about page - Theme component
EDIT: I’ve just been informed that this component functionality is now in core, under Admin → Community → About your site:
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Automatic groups are intentionally hidden from the group index (/g) — but the visibility settings will let normal users visit them directly (community.example.com/g/trust_level_0).
It’s been like this for a long time… there’s an old comment in the code about why
# hide automatic groups from all non stuff to de-clutter page
but maybe it’s unnecessary now? might be clearer to just have them follow their appearance settings (and let them remain hidden by default)
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I have no desire to expose TL group lists, but having the visibility settings do what they say might head off similar questions in the future.
(There’s a good detailed discussion over at the feature request for anyone who wants to support this.)
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Hi, I totally get your point about wanting the visibility settings to actually do what they promise — that would reduce confusion for sure.
However, I wanted to gently point out something: even if we hide the trust_level_X groups from the group list, the information is still quite exposed through the badge grant history.
For example, anyone can go to /badges, click on “Member” (or “Regular”, “Basic User”, etc.), and see a complete chronological list of everyone who has been granted that trust level badge. It basically functions as a public TL group list already.
So while cleaning up the groups page is nice, the trust level data isn’t really private in practice. Just thought it was worth mentioning.
You can disable the trust level badges in the admin menu. So while it might be true in your case that the information is also available on the badges page, other admins might have disabled the trust level badges (or even badges in general). I’d also disagree that it’s the same information. Group pages offer a searchable user list, where you can not only see when they got the badge but also when they posted and a list with posts from all the members.
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