A user, sbernhard, is trying to determine who can edit the FAQ, ToS, and Privacy pages on their Discourse site. They discovered that despite a TL4 user being in the “staff” group and having moderator privileges, they are unable to edit these pages. pfaffman suggested that anyone who can edit topics in the category where the FAQ lives should be able to edit it, but this did not work for sbernhard.
Justin suggested that moderators might be edit-restricted on pre-seeded topics, and sbernhard confirmed that only admins can edit these pages. Ondrej reported that moderators with any trust level can edit these pages on their site, which contradicts sbernhard’s findings.
After further investigation, sbernhard found that the code in topic_guardian.rb indeed restricts editing of these pages to admins only. However, sbernhard questioned why this seems to work differently for justin and ondrej. Riking explained that admins can edit these pages because they are rendered on “static pages”.
FAQ / tos / privacy are pages of the author “system”.
Who is able to change these pages? Or other question, is it possible that TL4 users are able to change the FAQ / tos / privacy?
I guess this is possible if the author of these pages are changed - is this the only way?
Thank you very much!
Anyone who can edit topics in the category where the FAQ lives. That’s the staff category by default, but if you move it somewhere else, then a TL4 could edit it.
hmm, this doesn’t work.
A TL4 user, which is in the “staff” group, can not edit the article.
Even if the faq is a “wiki post” the TL4 user is not able to edit it.
The faq article was once moved to another category but then moved back to staff. Can this be the reason why it doesn’t work?
If it’s in staff, then only staff can see it. You must leave it in a category that the TL4 user can see.
The TL4 user (sorry, forget to mention it, the TL4 user is moderator, too) has access to the staff group but editing is not possible. As I said, even “admin controls” exists and work but not the option to edit the post.
Does nobody has a clue whats maybe wrong here?
Can an Admin edit the post? Moderators might be edit restricted on those pre-seeded topics. I’d have to double check to be sure.
The admin is possible to change this entry. But its not possible with TL4 and not for moderators - which is weird.
@justin I just tested and a moderator with any TL can go to FaQ or ToS and edit the page.
@sbernhard do you have any plugins installed on your site?
EDIT: Also try removing the wiki designation from the post. Out of the box, these posts are not wikis, so there may be a conflict there.
Currently, the post is no wiki post. I just tested with 2.5.3 and it is still not working to change the faq with moderator priv / TL4. Even if this user is able to change the entry to be a wiki post (just that you know that this user has “great rights”).
Plugins:
Yes, the moderator user is a SAML user.
Can it be that its related because of moving the FAQ site to another category and then back?
(thanks to @ondrej / @justin for your help - very appreciated)
Code lib/guardian/topic_guardian.rb:
def can_edit_topic?(topic)
return false if Discourse.static_doc_topic_ids.include?(topic.id) && !is_admin?
So, I guess, its “work as designed” that only the admin can change FAQ/TOS/Privacy?
It’s possible for admins to edit them because those topics are rendered on the “static pages”.